ROKE  OF 
COVENDEN 


SNAITH 


■IIKIIIT 

LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OP 
CALIKMMU 


/itz. 


^ 


BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 


BROKE 

OF    COVENDEN 


BY 

J.  C.  SNAITH 

Author  of  "Araminta,"  "Mistress  Dorothy  Marvin,' 
"The  Great  Age,"  etc. 


"When  Adam  delved  and  Eve  span 
Who  was  then  the  Gentleman?" 


(Rewritten,   1914) 


BOSTON 

SMALL  MAYNARD  &  COMPANY 

1914 


Copyright,  1914, 

By  small,  maynard  and  company 

(Incorporated) 


GIFT 


8.  J.  Pabkhill  a  Co.,  Boston,  U.S.A.. 


TO 

s.  c. 


151 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2008  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/brokeofcovendenOOsnairich 


PREFACE 

TTTALKING  in  Piccadilly  yesterday  morning  I  met  the 
W  Complete  Englishman,  He  was  miracle  of  gloss  and 
gravity.  Civilization  shone  about  him  like  an  aureole;  the 
University  of  Oxford  oozed  from  every  pore.  The  set  of 
his  coat,  the  hang  of  his  trousers,  his  hoots,  his  tie,  his 
gloves,  his  umbrella,  all  had  the  aplomb  which  means  at 
least  three  generations  of  high  feeding.  Suddenly,  who 
came  ruffling  it  round  the  corner  of  Bond  Street  hut  rude 
Boreas,  saluted  this  paladin  with  a  freedom  that  ill  became 
a  gentleman,  knocked  off  the  hat  that  Mr.  Lock  had  ironed 
not  a  quarter  of  an  hour  before,  cast  a  speck  of  mud  on 
the  faultless  spats,  while  in  the  agitation  of  the  moment 
the  glass  hopped  from  the  well-trained  eye  and  was  shiv- 
ered into  little  bits  upon  the  pavement. 

Now,  was  not  that  a  piece  of  poor  behaviour f  The  by- 
standers were  agreed  that  Arrius  himself  could  not  have 
been  so  guilty.  And  while  a  district  messenger  retrieved 
the  hat  from  the  threshold  of  the  Burlington  Arcade, 
whither  it  had  been  carried  by  the  gale,  while  a  knight  of 
the  vestry  swept  the  glass  into  the  gutter,  and  a  policeman 
called  a  hansom,  I  was  moved  to  reflect  upon  the  mel- 
ancholy affair,  Newton  had  his  mind  directed  to  the  law 
of  gravity  by  the  fall  of  an  apple;  the  fall  of  my  country- 
man's hat  directed  my  own  to  one  hardly  less  momentous. 

That  the  gods  must  have  their  jest  was  an  old  saying  in 
the  time  of  Plato.  All  down  the  page  of  history,  in  point 
of  fact,  it  has  been  the  lament  of  refined  and  educated 
minds.  The  Olympian  sense  of  humour  is  very  positive, 
if  not  always  academic.     That  is  our  complaint. 

The  laughter  of  the  gods  is  immemorial,  but  unfor- 
tunately the  mode  of  its  indulgence  seems  open  to  objec- 

ix 


X  PREFACE 

Hon.  Laughter  itself  in  worthy  hands  can  be  a  salutary 
thing;  the  pity  is  that  it  may  too  readily  become  the  agent 
of  those  who  bring  it  low.  Without  a  spice  of  this  saving 
quality  nothing  is  worth  while.  There  is  no  game  to  be 
played.  But  why,  we  ask,  should  the  Immortal  Gods  pre- 
occupy themselves  with  their  child's  tricks  to  raise  a  laugh 
in  Heaven,  when  we,  their  victims,  can  only  stand  aghast  f 
The  sight  of  a  clown  thwacking  a  donkey  in  a  booth  is 
surely  too  primitive  at  this  time  of  day.  Let  us  frankly 
admit  that  the  "nostalgic  de  la  vie,"  that  strange  unrest 
and  weariness  of  life,  is  quite  as  likely  to  come  upon  the 
Immortals  as  upon  those  whose  mortality  is  bounded  by  a 
term  of  days.  But  we  would  put  it  to  them:  Can  they 
really  suppose  they  are  relieving  this  intolerable  pressure 
upon  their  own  nervous  systems  when  they  place  humilia- 
tions upon  ours? 

To  be  quite  frank,  the  laughter  of  the  gods  is  not  quite  so 
agreeable  as  it  might  be.  Civilization  has  moved  on  so 
much  of  late  as  to  make  it  clear  that  their  kind  of  mirth 
is  out  of  touch  with  our  immense  refinement.  To  use 
rightly  this  rare  and  precious  gift  there  should  be  an  ab- 
sence of  guile,  above  all,  an  absence  of  intention.  Let  it 
be  nectar  for  babes  and  the  gentle-hearted.  Alas!  the 
laughter  of  the  gods  is  much  too  grim. 

They  can  have  no  idea  how  it  appals  us  to  -find  ourselves 
the  victims  of  an  inveterate  witticism.  They  may  feed 
their  gaiety  by  thrusting  a  stake  through  our  immaculate 
waistcoats  to  observe  whether  it  makes  us  turn  up  the 
whites  of  our  eyes;  by  wrenching  a  limb  off  our  bodies  to 
see  if  we  can  stand  as  well  on  one  leg  as  on  two;  by  strip- 
ping off  the  clothes  of  our  Civilization  to  see  how  we  can 
bear  a  gross  return  to  Nature;  by  gouging  out  our  eyes 
to  see  if  darkness  will  induce  in  us  a  drunken  stagger;  by 
tampering  with  our  destiny  in  a  thousand  ways  to  provide 
the  entertainment  of  an  afternoon;  but  really  we  take  no 
greater  pleasure  from  this  form  of  joy  than  does  a  fly  when 
a  wanton  boy  plucks  out  its  wings.  Audiences  on  High 
may  roar  at  our  antics,  but  somehow  we  decline  to  be 
amused. 


PREFACE  xi 

At  one  time,  I  am  ashamed  to  say,  their  invention  was 
even  more  primitive  than  it  is  now.  It  was  like  that  of  a 
boy  who  ties  a  cracker  to  the  tail  of  a  cat,  or  turns  himself 
into  a  hear  for  the  purpose  of  frightening  his  small  sister. 
Before  Genius  rose  to  teach  them  better,  they  amused 
themselves  by  divorcing  character  from  form  and  species 
from  environment.  The  ignoble  was  beautiful  of  man- 
sion. An  unclean  spirit  inhabited  a  virgin  shape;  while  an 
immortal  soul  in  mortal  clay  was  the  consummation  of 
their  skill.  Beauty  mated  to  the  Beast  was  a  fable  zvith  a 
localized  significance.  There  was  the  case  of  Pan,  himself 
a  god,  in  the  body  of  a  goat.  When  ^neas  descended  to 
the  realms  of  Dis  he  met  a  harpy  with  the  face  of  a  woman 
and  the  talons  of  a  vulture.  He  saw  a  terrible  female 
whose  head  was  quick  with  serpents.  Satyrs  and  half- 
men-horses  were  a  common  sight.  Minerva  sprang  from 
the  forehead  of  Jupiter  in  a  suit  of  mail.  There  was  no 
end  to  their  legerdemain.  The  tricks  they  put  upon  one 
another  surprised  even  themselves.  But  it  was  very  in- 
convenient when  they  took  to  surprising  us. 

First,  they  bestowed  on  Man  the  gift  of  Reason,  in  order 
that  they  might  be  diverted  by  the  uses  to  which  he  puts  it. 
That,  however,  was  the  device  of  One  to  whom  I  must 
return  later.  But  the  struggles  of  Man  with  his  Grecian 
gift  has  done  much  for  the  Immortal  gaiety.  Nothing  has 
charmed  it  more  than  the  sight  of  the  poor  fellow  with 
his  rushlight,  his  farthing  candle,  peering  into  the  phenom- 
ena of  time  and  space.  Yes,  my  Masters,  that  was  an 
inspiration,  a  master-stroke  of  zvit! 

When  our  poor  father  Adam,  the  iirst  animal  the  Gods 
endowed  with  Reason,  looked  up  above  his  garden  to  scan 
the  blue,  what  a  twitter  of  delight  there  was  on  High 
Olympus!  How  they  doted  on  the  perplexity  of  the  poor 
bewildered  rogue!  How  they  feted  the  unique  Talent 
that  had  prepared  the  glad  surprise!  And  the  spectacle 
of  the  heir  of  all  the  ages  groping  in  darkness  with  his  dip 
of  tallow  increases  year  by  year  its  pozver  upon  them. 
It  is  this  miserable  Jack  o*  Lanthorn  which  gives  us  such 
an  opinion  of  ourselves.     We  are  full  of  pity  for  all  who 


xii  PREFACE 

are  without  it;  and  yet  this  absurd  genie  that  a  whimsical 
Artist-God  bestowed  on  us  in  a  moment  of  inspiration 
when  his  talent  was  running  free,  of  which  we  make  no 
better  use  than  the  naked  savage  who  ties  a  pair  of  trousers 
round  his  neck  instead  of  round  his  loins,  simply  leads  us 
on  to  madness.  A  footman  in  livery,  or  a  king  in  a  uni- 
form, looks  no  more  ridiculous  than  we  hapless  humans 
strutting  about  with  our  Gift.  The  Immortals  are  en- 
chanted with  us  poor  Monsieur  Jourdains  who  use  our 
swords  to  eat  our  cheese.  The  gift  of  Reason  has  made 
us  one  of  the  pillars  of  their  Theatre. 

Since  Man  learned  to  think  for  himself  there  has  not 
been  a  dull  moment  in  Heaven.  ''  Civilisation  "  has  played 
to  crowded  houses  every  night.  It  is  the  keystone  of  the 
Olympian  Drama.  And  the  August  Talent  that  made  it 
possible,  the  great  protagonist  of  their  delight,  has  done 
more  for  the  entertainment  of  his  fellows  than  all  the 
poets  known  to  man.  His  place  in  the  Olympian  Theatre 
is  one  that  Aristophanes  and  Moliere  might  envy;  indeed, 
without  him  there  had  been  no  Olympian  Theatre  at  all. 
But  I  must  tell  you  who  he  is. 

One  day,  in  an  unhappy  moment  for  the  world,  a  genius 
like  our  Shakespeare  rose  on  High.  His  talents  were  an 
evidence  of  his  obscure  origin,  but  his  parts  were  so  bril- 
liant and  ingenious  that  almost  at  once  he  was  made  a  god 
of  the  -first  class,  just  as  Swift  was  made  a  dean.  It 
seemed  wise  to  propitiate  him  lest  on  a  day  he  should  turn 
his  surprising  talents  against  his  peers  and  hold  them  up 
to  ridicule.  This  Immortal,  like  our  own  Swan  of  Avon, 
has  never  been  approached  in  his  own  particular  sphere. 
He  is  unique.  He  is  the  only  one  among  them  who  has 
an  invention  at  once  constructive  cmd  consecutive ;  he  is 
the  only  one  among  them  endowed  with  Cosmic  Imagina- 
tion. He  is  an  artist,  a  poet,  a  philosopher,  and  a  dram- 
atist. He  is  of  a  sovereign  intelligence  all  compact  in  a 
milieu  that  has  had  no  Beginning  and  is  therefore  unlikely 
to  have  an  End. 

His  first  act  was  to  build  a  theatre  in  the  clouds,  and 
for  many  years  now  he  has  ravished  all  sorts  and  condi- 


PREFACE  xiii 

tions  of  Immortals  by  performing  little  things  of  his  own 
with  a  company  picked  from  every  corner  of  the  world 
below.  It  was  an  unhappy  day,  indeed,  when  he  turned 
his  attention  to  mankind.  Hitherto  the  Immortals  had 
always  enacted  their  own  farces.  They  were  so  primitive 
that  they  did  not  call  for  specialization.  Before  the  rise 
of  this  audacious  talent  their  idea  of  a  humorous  piece  of 
mummery  was  confined  to  Vulcan's  limp  when  he  handed 
round  ambrosia.  The  gifted  amateur  was  quite  equal  to 
parts  so  elementary.  But  this  Dramatist  soon  changed 
all  that.  His  art  was  so  various,  so  intricate,  that,  like 
Moliere,  he  procured  a  trained  company  of  comedians  to 
interpret  it. 

As  his  own  fellow  gods  and  goddesses  had  not  enough 
capacity  to  embody  his  ideas,  and  were  in  any  case  de- 
barred by  their  social  position  from  becoming  professional 
mimes,  this  Dramatist  ransacked  every  hole  and  corner 
of  the  Universe  to  look  for  players.  He  always  said  the 
English  made  the  best  comedians.  They  would  face  the 
most  exacting  situations  with  an  imperturbable  phlegm. 
Their  air  of  high  seriousness  was  simply  invaluable  when- 
ever it  was  necessary  to  impress  conviction  on  the  audi- 
ence. Their  solemnity  was  so  fine  that  they  could  impart 
verisimilitude  to  his  most  wildly  improbable  things.  Be- 
sides, such  a  demeanour  was  very  piquant.  A  French- 
man might  stand  on  his  head  with  more  grace,  more  as  it 
were  to  the  manner  born,  but  an  Englishman  would  turn 
up^  his  heels  as  though  he  were  sitting  in  church,  and  con- 
trive to  look  "very  good  form'*  even  with  his  trousers 
uppermost.  Small  wonder  that  the  God  would  always 
have  these  born  comedians  when  he  could  get  them!  It 
is  recorded  in  his  journal  intime  "  that  whenever  he  saw 
an  Englishman  he  could  hardly  keep  his  fingers  off  him." 

Consummate  in  his  art,  he  merits  the  high-sounding 
titles  his  admirers  bestowed  upon  him.  For  he  comprises 
and  excels  Aristophanes  and  Moliere,  Shakespeare  and 
Sophocles.  I  can  hope  to  give  you  no  adequate  idea  of 
the  depth  and  range  of  his  method.  Human  life  is  but 
a  phase  of  it.     The  stars  in  their  courses  are  but  another. 


xiv  PREFACE 

The  source  of  energy,  the  mystery  of  matter,  is  only  a 
third.  He  can  employ  the  winds  of  heaven  for  a  chorus 
and  its  lightnings  for  stage  Hre.  Its  thunders  may  be  "  a 
noise  heard  off  L!'  But  with  all  these  resources  at  his 
command,  with  a  "  universality "  more  literal  than  that  of 
our  own  Swan  of  Avon,  he  is  ever,  in  the  midst  of  these 
egregious  epics  and  fantasies  thai  may  be  said  to  cleave 
space  at  every  point,  preoccupying  himself  with  the  comic- 
irony  of  the  Part  in  its  relation  to  the  Whole,  the  strange 
and  pitiful  spectacle  of  the  turbulent  spirit  of  Man  sub- 
mitting to  the  dictates  of  Natural  Law.  Upon  that  one 
slight  theme  alone  he  has  founded  a  literature. 

I  cannot  tell  you  what  a  hero  he  has  become  on  High. 
His  excursions  into  drama  are  the  delight  of  all.  The 
more  cynical  and  arch  the  combination,  the  more  fresh  and 
unexpected  the  effects,  the  franker  the  joy  of  that  august 
audience  in  his  ingenuity.  Like  a  French  playwright,  he 
has  the  gift  of  doing  inimitably  roguish  things  with  the 
commonplace.  He  will  espy  a  Monsieur  Jourdain  where 
the  untutored  eye  will  see  nothing  but  the  most  austere 
and  serious  propriety.  One  of  his  earliest  successes  was 
the  masque  of  the  British  Matron.  It  was  not  at  all  an 
ambitious  effort.  It  was  in  his  "early  manner *";  it  was 
as  trite  as  Marivaux,  but  the  wonderful  fecundity  he 
showed  in  the  treatment  of  a  subject  with  which  his 
friends  the  Critics  assured  him  nothing  could  be  done  to 
add  to  the  Immortal  gaiety  has  made  it  classical  as  a 
Curtain-Raiser. 

You  have  seen  a  British  matron  with  her  brood  about 
her,  impregnability  in  every  feather,  a  sight  very  poetic 
and  pastoral,  an  emblem  of  the  barn-door  with  an  im- 
memorial cluck  upon  her  countenance.  Well,  he  took  this 
virtuous  fowl  and  threw  her  into  all  manner  of  compro- 
mising and  undignified  predicaments.  He  stripped  the 
feathers  off  her  and  laid  her  bare.  He  gave  such  an 
incorrigibly  witty  twist  to  her  struttings  and  prancings 
about  the  farmyard  that  every  time  she  cackled  the  audi- 
ence roared  and  expected  her  to  lay  an  egg.  At  every 
feather  he  pulled  off  her  decorous  form   the  tears  ran 


PREFACE  XV 

down  their  faces.  It  was  all  so  perfectly  simple  but  so 
audacious.  Mrs.  Grundy  Toute  Nue  while  as  innocent 
as  Paul  et  Virginie  became  as  famous  for  daring  as  a 
Restoration  Comedy, 

Like  a  radiant  imagination  playing  about  the  realms  of 
faery  that  ruthless  fancy  lights  the  primitive  theme.  It 
sets  such  wings  upon  her  chicks  that  they  take  a  flight  into 
the  empyrean  and  never  return  to  the  humble  straw  of 
the  bereaved  parent  bird.  And  when  the  decently  clothed 
British  Barndoor  Hen  deliberately  plucks  out  her  own 
feathers  in  her  despair,  judges  of  the  Olympian  Comic 
Drama  will  tell  you  that  it  is  as  much  a  master-stroke  of 
art  as  anything  in  Sophocles,  and  have  compared  it  to  poor 
King  (Edipus  plucking  out  his  eyes. 

At  psychological  moments  in  the  little  piece  this  atroci- 
ous Wit  proceeds  to  harass  the  watchful  female  parent 
with  Outsiders,  who  will  intrude  after  the  horrid  fashion 
of  their  kind.  A  fox  is  seen  to  stalk  across  the  yard  in 
the  middle  of  the  night  with  his  brush  outstretched  and 
his  nose  upon  the  ground  inquiring  for  poultry.  Again, 
he  allows  a  gay  Lothario  in  the  guise  of  a  cock  pheasant 
to  obtrude  a  flaunting  presence  among  a  susceptible  brood. 
And  you  cannot  resist  the  impudent  suggestion  that  the 
sorcery  of  his  many  phones  and  long  tail  feathers  may 
cause  one  of  these  fine  mornings  as  much  consternation 
in  that  well-regulated  household  as  the  apparition  of  a 
black  baby  in  a  Christian  family.  A  Cochin  China  with 
a  burnished  breast  and  a  tail  so  long  that  the  farmyard 
stands  aghast  may  be  a  happy  stroke  after  the  God's  own 
heart,  but  conceive  the  feelings  of  the  Cochin  China's 
''people"! 

That  is  the  only  m^ral  of  the  simple  little  play.  How 
many  hundreds  of  times  an  Olympian  audience  has  roared 
at  it  I  cannot  tell  you,  any  more  than  I  can  tell  you  how 
many  thousands  of  persons  have  wept  over  Manon 
Lescaut,  or  laughed  at  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield.  But  this 
little  thing  is  only  one  among  a  million  of  his  extrava- 
gantly droll  but  at  the  same  time  adorably  human  fantasies. 
The  cry  among  us  now  is  all  for  "  realism  "  in  art,  as  you 


xvi  PREFACE 

know.  We  must  have  the  uncompromising  facts  of  life. 
In  this  grim  artist  you  get  them;  that  is  why  I  venture 
to  think  you  will  appreciate  any  unconsidered  triUe  of  his 
that  is  set  before  you. 

It  is  hard  to  know  what  to  select  from  such  a  mass  of 
achievement,  for  this  Dramatist  was  even  more  proliHc 
than  M.  Dumas  the  elder.  His  pieces  are  all  equally  char- 
acteristic in  their  boldness  of  touch,  but  some  are  a  little 
more  -finished  than  others,  which  is  inevitable  when  we 
consider  that  they  are  knocked  off  with  the  careless  inso- 
lence of  power,  while  so  confident  is  he  in  his  skill  that  he 
scorns  to  blot  a  line.  And  some  of  his  pieces,  of  course, 
are  very  ambitious;  and  disciples  educated  to  his  highest 
will  assure  you  they  are  quite  his  finest  things.  But  as 
it  may  call  for  an  oeon  to  represent  them  and  an  era  of 
ten  thousand  years  or  so  to  perform  the  first  act,  I  am 
afraid  that  as  far  as  we  are  concerned  they  must  remain 
caviare  to  the  general.  The  diligence  of  a  hundred  Gib- 
bons would  hardly  be  able  to  outline  a  conception  of  that 
kind  in  English  prose.  The  encyclopcedic  industry  of  the 
author  of  the  Comedie  Humaine  and  the  integrity  of  the 
author  of  the  "  Rougon-Mac quart  Series,'*  that  unrelent- 
ing blue-book,  would  not  even  suffice  to  draw  up  a  list  of 
the  dramatis  personce  to  put  on  the  programme. 

Any  little  thing  of  this  Author's  of  which  in  my  feeble 
way  I  may  have  the  presumption  to  try  to  give  you  an 
idea  mtist,  by  the  nature  of  the  case,  be  no  more  than  a 
fugitive  piece  in  its  relation  to  his  genius.  It  must  be 
chosen  from  the  "  Civilization  Series,"  a  collection  of  the 
veriest  trifles  tossed  off  in  an  idle  hour.  This  Series  may 
be  likened,  if  a  comparison  will  help  you,  to  the  ''Snob 
Papers"  that  the  late  Mr.  Thackeray  contributed  to 
Punch.  The  Author  has  been  known  to  repudiate  them 
with  a  laugh  if  anyone  had  the  temerity  to  mention  them 
in  his  presence,  but  they  have  brought  him  much  kudos 
in  the  past,  and  whenever  they  are  performed,  continue  to 
do  so  at  the  present  day.  For  there  are  those  among  his 
friends  who  never  tire  of  putting  forward  the  opinion 
that  these  trifles,  light  and  foolish  as  they  are,  contain 


PREFACE  ■  xvii 

many  of  his  wittiest  and  happiest  and  most  diverting 
touches.  They  have  no  significance  at  all;  the  whole  series 
is  intended  to  be  played  by  human  souls  simply  that  they 
may  exhibit  their  limitations  before  the  Gods  at  first  hand; 
but  certain  old-fashioned  critics  on  High,  with  the  cour- 
age  of  their  convictions,  like  our  Mr.  Blank,  say  that  the 
more  high-flown  comedies  of  this  Dramatist,  such  as  The 
Solar  System,  Reincarnation,  The  Darwinian  Theory, 
Evolution,  The  Fourth  Dimension,  and  all  such  elaborate 
art  as  that,  which  smells  of  the  lamp  and  is  designed  to 
show  his  virtuosity,  can  go  to  Hades  so  long  as  they  are 
allowed  to  occupy  their  favourite  fauteuils  in  the  Olympian 
Theatre,  and  witness  a  delectable  farce,  out  of  the  belittled 
*'  Civilization  Series,"  played  without  a  smile  by  adorable 
Englishmen  and  adorable  Englishwomen.  What,  ask 
these  stout  fellows,  can  be  more  exquisitely  inane  than 
Broke  of  Covenden,  a  lever  de  rideau  performed  for  the 
first  time  on  the  occasion  of  the  six  hundred  and  eighty- 
fifth  anniversary  of  the  signing  of  Magna  Charta  in  Eng- 
land?  The  Author  felt  bound  to  acknowledge  the  wild 
cheers  that  greeted  him  at  the  end  of  the  performance, 
for  which  at  the  time  he  seemed  not  ungrateful,  yet  when 
two  of  his  friends  met  him  in  the  street  the  next  day,  he 
said  that  to  be  applauded  for  such  a  triUe  was  the  most 
humiliating  experience  of  his  life. 

The  night  before,  however,  there  was  no  mistaking  the 
roars  that  greeted  it  in  the  theatre.  Many  ardent  first- 
nighters  awoke  with  aching  ribs  the  next  morning.  And 
well  they  might,  for  the  mirth  of  these  inveterate  f casters 
upon  laughter  may  be  heard  to  echo  on  such  occasions  in 
the  uttermost  places  of  the  earth.  In  every  nook  and 
cranny  of  our  system  can  we  hear  it  if  we  choose.  And 
hearing  it  we  ought  to  tremble.  But  we  seldom  do.  For 
even  if  we  hear  it  we  are  apt  to  think  they  laugh  at  others 
rather  than  ourselves.  There  is  really  no  reason  why 
they  should  laugh  at  us. 

/  think,  perhaps,  I  ought  to  tell  you  now  the  name  of 
this  great  Author,  but  already  you  may  have  guessed  it 
for  yourselves.    He  is  called  the  God  of  Irony.    He  is 


xviii  PREFACE 

not  very  popular  upon  High.  He  is  the  essence  of  polite- 
ness to  his  fellow  immortals,  but  he  really  cannot  help 
smiling  at  them  now  and  then.  On  their  part  they  pay 
great  deference  to  this  solitary,  inaccessible,  brooding 
spirit  dwelling  in  their  midst,  yet  they  can  never  quite  for- 
get that  in  the  sight  of  Heaven  he  ranks  before  them  all. 
Even  in  the  midst  of  many  strange  and  conflicting  ele- 
ments he  has  become  a  figure  of  importance,  and  in  the 
sight  of  Man  he  has  emerged  as  the  God  of  Love. 

Wherever  there  is  the  breath  of  life  you  may  discern 
his  handiwork.  There  is  not  an  insect  or  a  reptile  so 
mean  in  itself  that  it  simulates  the  colour  of  the  ground 
for  its  own  protection,  in  which  you  cannot  find  a  trace. 
Even  a  fragile  plant,  that  adopts  all  manner  of  devices  to 
get  its  head  towards  the  sun,  exhibits  it.  The  Irony  of 
the  Creation  is  hardly  less  than  the  Irony  of  Circumstance. 
And  our  poor  human  life  w  full  of  it.  This  ruthless  artist 
takes  human  emotion  and  grinds  it  into  paint  more  luridly 
to  illuminate  the  pageant  of  our  mortal  life.  He  takes 
human  endeavour  and  grinds  that  into  powder  too,  that 
it  may  intermix  and  make  his  colours  permanent.  By 
his  artifice  we  are  at  once  the  means  and  the  subject- 
matter.  The  theme  is  our  comic  destiny;  in  order  to 
portray  it  he  dips  his  brush  into  a  pigment  compounded 
of  our  flesh  and  blood.  He  is  the  master  of  that  rather 
weird  revel  we  call  existence.  He  is  the  stage  manner 
of  our  feeble  little  struts,  our  sorry  little  antics.  He  is 
the  deviser  of  this  pitiful  little  masque  of  ours.  He  is 
the  author  of  that  farrago  of  inconsequence  through  which 
we  ruffle  it  for  one  crowded  hour  before  the  gods  on  our 
way  to  seek  oblivion.  He  has  a  place  to  himself  in  the 
Olympian  Theatre,  and  is  generally  alone  save  when  Clio, 
the  Muse  of  History,  trips  in  upon  him  with  the  text  of 
the  play  or  a  synopsis  of  the  scenery. 

The  God  of  Irony  broods  and  sits  apart.  He  may  be 
compared  to  an  old  eagle  seated  on  a  great  height  above 
the  clouds;  an  old  eagle  with  a  curved  beak  and  talons, 
whose  bloody,  mocking,  and  humorous  eyes  watch  below 
in  the  abyss  the  Soul  of  Man  tossing  in  the  Purgatory  of 


PREFACE  xix 

Human  Life.  He  regards  the  antic  writhings  of  its  larvae 
with  the  same  impartial  zest,  the  same  hearty  awe,  whether 
they  are  real  souls  quick  and  nervous,  or  cunning  simu- 
lacra whose  hearts  are  made  of  straw,  puppets  modelled 
in  wax,  draped  perfectly,  regardless  of  expense,  and 
painted  to  look  exactly  like  the  genuine  article.  They 
are  all  alike  to  that  amused  spectator  so  long  as  they  show 
signs  of  Life.  A  speck  of  dust  on  the  shoes  may  he  for 
one  the  instrument,  whereas  another  may  require  a  mortal 
pass;  hut  what's  the  odds  if  only  they  produce  vibration. 
He  sits  watching  their  unwilling  and  undignified  perform- 
ances, watching  them  fret  their  little  hour,  with  the  spectre 
of  a  laugh  staring  out  of  his  old  and  awful  face,  except 
when  now  and  then  some  naif  performer,  a  little  stiff er 
in  the  joints,  a  little  more  tardy  than  the  rest,  wriggles 
through  its  pantomime  and  seeks  to  hide  its  torments  with 
a  kind  of  swagger.  If  once  he  can  detect  that  air  of 
hravado,  however  pitiful  it  may  he,  it  acts  upon  him  like 
a  cup  of  wine,  and  he  has  heen  knomm  to  vent  his  feelings 
in  a  sudden  roar  that  fairly  rocks  his  ribs,  a  very  Aristo- 
phanic  bellow. 

Indeed,  one  of  his  most  penetrating  critics  has  said  of 
him  that  wherever  the  Inordinate  raises  its  head,  whether 
in  a  nation  or  an  individual,  those  bloody  and  humorous 
eyes  may  be  seen  to  hover.  And  sometimes,  in  his  own 
inimitable  way  he  is  tempted  to  turn  it  to  the  uses  of  his 
Art,  and  the  result  is  an  odd  sort  of  fantasy  or  a  quaint 
kind  of  farce,  whereby  many  beautifully  upholstered  ladies 
and  gentlemen  are  able  to  become  a  show  before  the  gods. 

It  is  one  of  these  you  are  bidden  to  attend.  This  un- 
considered trifle  has  been  chosen  with  care  from  the  work 
of  this  Immortal  Farceur.  There  is  not  a  line  in  it  that 
can  offend,  except  a  little  unconventionality  here  and  there, 
which  is,  of  course,  to  be  expected.  But  please  do  not  he 
alarmed.  Not  once  does  it  go  beyond  the  limits  pre- 
scribed by  the  prettily  domestic.  Mrs.  Juno,  Masters 
Castor  and  Pollux,  and  Miss  Minerva  the  governess,  too, 
attended  a  matinee  performance  and  sat  in  the  dress  circle, 
and  very  pleased  they  were  when  they  left  the  theatre. 


XX  PREFACE 

The  little  thing  is  so  chaste  that  it  can  hardly  bring  the 
blush  of  shame  even  to  the  cheek  of  a  circulating  librarian. 

The  subject  chosen  by  the  Author  in  this  characteristic 
little  fragment  is  an  Englishman  of  the  present  time. 
Why  he  chose  him  from  among  so  many  of  our  country- 
men were  hard  to  say.  What  crisp  quality  iirst  recom- 
mended him  to  his  dramatic  instinct?  Why  should  his 
calm-blooded  person  be  seen  to  contain  the  theme  of  one 
of  his  most  approved  and  uproarious  farces?  There  is 
not  a  line  of  his  exterior  to  suggest  that  destiny.  You 
would  have  thought  such  an  upstanding  pillar  of  our  Eng- 
lish perfection  would  have  defied  even  the  all-seeing,  all- 
appropriating  eye  of  an  Ironist  among  the  gods.  There 
is  not  a  trace  of  levity  in  his  outward  demeanour  or  his 
daily  life.  Summer  and  winter  he  rises  at  the  hour  of 
6.30,  takes  his  cold  bath,  and  shaves  his  beard.  He  is 
precise  of  habit  and  reserved  of  manner.  His  sluggish- 
ness of  temper  is  the  envy  of  all  who  know  him.  You 
may  look  in  vain  for  a  light  of  the  comic  in  him.  If  he 
is  laughable,  so  it  would  almost  seem  is  gravity  itself. 

What,  then,  is  the  secret  of  his  selection?  How  was 
his  surprising  merit  as  a  natural  comedian  first  made  clear? 
It  argues  a  very  profound  mind  to  have  traced  an  af- 
finity to  the  House  of  Moliere  in  an  exterior  so  slab,  so 
heavy-footed,  so  four-square.  Indeed,  our  ignorance  is 
such  that  we  beg  to  advance  a  theory,  in  order  to  account 
for  the  God  of  Irony's  whimsical  choice.  It  is  known 
that  Debrett  is  his  favourite  work  of  English  -fiction. 
And  among  the  well-informed  it  is  freely  said  that  the 
editors  of  this  kind  of  publication  are  in  the  subsidy  of 
the  God  of  Irony  to  collect,  label,  and  classify  like  mate- 
rial for  his  use. 

To  be  a  little  more  explicit.  Our  country  has  lately 
dedicated  a  whole  literature  to  the  service  of  that  grave 
body  of  persons  who  in  divers  and  unexpected  ways  have 
contrived  to  force  their  entities  upon  the  public.  It  is 
a  considerable  body,  for  the  Press  is  very  tender-hearted 
nowadays,  so  that  he  who  yearns  for  notoriety  does  not 
yearn  in  vain.    It  is  a  catholic  body,  for  mediocrity  of 


PREFACE  xxi 

every  branch,  shade  and  practice,  in  all  the  ramifications 
of  its  angelic  self-sufficiency,  has  its  little  garden  there. 
The  really  great,  as  all  the  world  knows,  have  never  been 
scarcer  than  they  are  to-day;  but  in  this  Valhalla  the  num- 
ber of  the  pseudo,  the  demi,  or  half-great  is  amazing. 
Perhaps  it  is  one  of  the  penalties  of  our  progress. 

It  would  seem  that  there  is  one  qualification  for  ad- 
mittance into  this  holy  of  holies.  At  the  same  time  it 
would  appear  to  be  as  essential  as  a  feat  of  arms  for  the 
emblazonment  of  a  device  upon  the  shield  of  a  knight  of 
old.  It  is  necessary  to  write  a  book.  The  kind  of  book 
does  not  matter  very  much.  It  may  be  on  any  subject, 
written  in  any  style;  or  better,  on  no  subject  known  to 
man,  written  in  no  style  comprehended  by  him.  It  may 
be  a  sermon,  a  pamphlet,  a  treatise,  a  play,  a  novel,  a  book 
of  verses.  But  provided  it  is  printed  and  bound,  adver- 
tised in  the  Press,  praised  by  the  ripe  scholar  and  damned 
by  the  irresponsible  journalist,  the  writer,  whatever  the 
age  or  the  sex,  is  free  of  this  shining  company.  The 
magic  page  on  which  his  name  is  inscribed  and  that  of  his 
parents,  the  schools  and  universities  that  count  him  an 
alumnus,  his  clubs,  his  pursuits,  his  political  and  religious 
opinions,  his  landed  estate,  his  heir-apparent,  and  the  num- 
ber of  horses  he  has  in  training,  is  his  peculiar  property. 
His  name  is  allotted  the  niche  dedicated  to  his  great  dis- 
tinction,  and  he  awakes  to  Und  himself  a  "Person  of  the 
Period."  And  there  is  reason  to  believe  it  was  while  the 
God  of  Irony  was  seeking  a  moment's  relaxation  from  a 
more  important  task  that  he  turned  to  the  source  where 
he  was  most  likely  to  find  it.  In  other  words,  he  picked 
up  the  current  issue  of  this  wonderful  manual,  wetted  his 
observant  thumb,  and  chanced  upon  what  follows: — 

Broke,  Edmund  William  Aubrey  Carysfort  Baigent,  J.P., 
D.L.,  e.s.  of  Edmund  John  Baigent  Broke  and  Lady  Caroline, 
d.  of  9th  Earl  Oxter.  B.  1840.  M.  Jane  Sophia,  2nd  d.  of 
I2th  Baron  Bosket  of  Hipsley.  Educ.  Eton;  Christ  Church, 
Oxford.  M.P.  unopposed  and  continuously  for  South-East 
Cuttisham  and  Hundred  of  Ouvrey  from  1876  to  1895.  Hon. 
Col.  South  Parkshire  Hussars.  Master  of  Foxhounds  (Park- 
shire)   1879-1881.    Conservative  in  politics.    Publication:    An 


xxii  PREFACE 

Inquiry  into  the  Agricultural  Significance  of  the  Preparation 
and  Application  of  Chemical  Manure  for  the  Production  of 
Mangold  Wurzel.  Owns  about  8,000  acres.  Heir,  s.  William, 
b.  1875  (Royal  Horse  Guards).  Recreations,  farming,  shoot- 
ing, hunting.  Address,  3  Broke  Street,  St.  James's,  S.W.; 
Covenden,  Cuttisham,  Parkshire;  Club,  Carlton. 

Now,  what  there  was  in  that  inventory  to  provoke  the 
God  I  cannot  telL  For  does  it  not  present  the  outline  of 
the  Immaculatef  Is  it  not  the  consummation  towards 
which  every  possessor  of  five  thousand  pounds  per  annum 
turns  his  eyes?  It  is  the  mirror  not  of  one  hut  of  a  class. 
It  is  Perfection  visualized  and  in  the  Hesh:  actual,  quick, 
articulate:  spotless  linen,  matchless  puppy-walking,  dis- 
tinguished conduct  of  the  letter  H.  Perfection  laying 
down  its  pheasants,  preserving  its  foxes,  subsidising  the 
local  hunt  with  its  last  guinea;  Perfection  hurling  the 
thunders  of  love  from  the  county  bench  four  times  a  year. 
What  can  you  ask  more?  It  is  the  best  of  all  that  is  pos- 
sible among  the  best  of  all  possible  men. 

There  does  not  appear  to  be  a  Haw.  The  fabric  of  this 
ideal  character  is  as  chaste  as  the  Monarchical  System, 
Government  by  Party,  Trial  by  lury,  and  The  Times  News- 
paper. It  is  the  consecration  of  the  national  endeavour. 
You  would  have  thought  it  would  have  given  pause  even 
to  that  Olympian.  He  could  never  have  seen  it  admonish 
a  farm  labourer  for  kicking  his  wife,  or  send  him  to  penal 
servitude  for  snaring  a  rabbit.  This  ideal  character  is  so 
many-sided  yet  so  complete.  It  is  honeycombed  with  vir- 
tue, interwoven,  overlapped.  There  is  nothing  superficial 
or  skin-deep.  The  more  you  delve  below  the  surface  the 
more  impressed  you  will  become. 

Is  it  not  the  picture  of  a  pastoral  simpleness?  One 
would  have  thought  that  such  dignity  alone  would  have 
kept  it  sacred.  There  is  not  a  stroke  that  could  embellish 
it.  Dignity  hand  in  hand  with  reticence;  a  well-bred 
measure  of  accomplishment  and  an  equally  well-bred  ab- 
sence of  it.  You  do  not  look  for  genius  in  the  Complete 
Englishman.  That  would  be  sheer  folly.  Nor  do  you 
look  for  ideas.  It  would  hardly  be  "  cricket "  for  such  a 
grand  exemplar  of  "  good  form  "  to  take  an  unfair  advan- 


PREFACE  xxiii 

tage  of  his  neighbours.  Besides,  he  would  forfeit  a  few 
feathers  of  his  caste  in  his  divergence  from  type.  What 
are  conventions  for?  A  vegetable  is  quite  respectable. 
A  cabbage  is  perhaps  the  most  decent  thing  in  nature. 

Let  us,  then,  rejoice  that  our  paladin  is  armed  so  fully. 
There  is  not  a  touch  wanting  to  vindicate  his  passion  for 
the  right  and  proper.  He  has  paid  his  court  to  war  and 
letters.  He  has  served  his  country  in  the  senate,  but  is 
prepared  to  serve  her  in  the  field.  He  has  written  his 
monograph,  but  is  also  the  patron  of  manly  exercises.  He 
has  made  the  laws  of  the  people,  and  now  sees  that  they 
get  them.  He  has  his  solid  stake  in  the  country  and  done 
his  duty  by  the  population.  He  is  faithful  to  the  fine 
national  religion  that  you  can  never  have  too  much  of  the 
best,  A  cabbage-patch  with  an  Englishman  standing  on  it 
is  better  than  all  the  sciences,  all  the  philosophies.  Indeed, 
to  insist  on  his  merit  would  be  a  work  of  supererogation 
were  we  not  Englishmen  all,  and  akin  to  him  therefore  in 
our  unwillingness  to  treat  it  as  a  mere  matter  of  course. 
You  see  where  he  has  been  educated.  Yet  he  has  escaped 
the  peerage  at  present  by  a  concatenation  of  circumstances 
it  will  be  our  duty  to  investigate.  It  is  almost  incredible 
that  such  an  example  of  concrete  virtue  has  received  no 
sanction  from  the  state.  Are  we  relapsing  upon  Bar- 
barism, do  you  think?  Surely  all  roads  in  our  Civilization 
lead  to  the  Mecca  of  an  Embodied  Excellence,  otherwise 
we  should  have  continued  to  walk  naked  and  eat  our  zvives* 
relations. 

I  can  never  tire  of  protesting  that  the  God  of  Irony 
might  have  had  more  reverence  for  our  feelings  as  a  na- 
tion and  a  great  one,  than  to  have  selected  this  fair,  this 
radiant,  image  of  all  we  hold  to  be  worthy,  for  the  diver- 
sion of  himself  and  his  peers.  Far  rather  I  had  yielded 
to  him  Paradise  Lost  and  the  tragedy  of  Hamlet.  He 
should  have  had  our  best,  our  all  in  art  and  literature  if 
only  he  had  spared  this  incomparable  thing. 

It  may  be  gathered  from  internal  evidence  that  the  ruth- 
less Hunter,  having  once  started  the  quarry,  never  left  his 
line.     There  is  reason  to  believe  he  did  not  fail  to  observe 


xxiv  PREFACE 

the  asterisks  that  were  dotted  against  divers  names  on  that 
fatal  page  of  the  manual.  In  elucidation  of  them  the  fol- 
lowing legend  was  printed  at  the  bottom'. — 

''For  correct  pronunciatioil  refer  to  page  15,  413." 

Upon  turning  to  the  page  in  question  he  was,  in  common 
with  a  more  reverent-minded  English  middle  class,  en- 
treated to  spell  them  Marjorihanks  and  to  pronounce  them 
Cholmondeley, 

Thus: — 

Broke    becomes  Brook. 
Covenden    „  Cuwin^den, 

Baigent       „  Bay' gent    {'' g"   as  in   ''gentle- 

man*'). 

It  is  stated  on  high  authority  that  when  the  God  of  Irony 
received  this  information  he  slapped  his  hand  on  his  bleak 
thighbone  and  uttered  his  historical  saying,  "Ha,  these 
English ! " 

On  looking  in  other  directions  he  obtained  more  light 
on,  and  additional  lustres  for,  the  name  in  question.  It 
is  thought  that  after  first  sighting  his  quarry  in  Persons  of 
the  Period,  he  followed  him  through  the  more  elaborate 
tome,  which  I  understand  contains  much  of  his  favourite 
reading:  Sir  Horatio  Hare's  Peerage,  Baronetage,  Knight- 
age, and  Landed  Gentry.  It  may  interest  the  curious 
to  learn — and  in  such  matters  who  is  not  curious? — that 
Sir  Horatio  wrote  this  monumental  work  entirely  out  of 
his  own  head.  That  he  was  able  to  accomplish  a  feat  of 
this  magnitude  was  due  to  his  extensive  family  connections. 

There  is  also  a  companion  work.  Sir  Horatio  Hare's 
Stately  Homes  of  England,  with  plates.  This  too  is  ex- 
tempore, and  even  the  plates  are  the  work  of  the  same 
gifted  hand.  There  is  not  a  great  house  in  the  three  king- 
doms, provided  it  has  a  deer  park  around  it,  or  a  mortgage 
upon  it,  in  which  Sir  Horatio  has  not  stayed  so  long  as  it 
suited  his  convenience.  There  is  a  description  of  Coven- 
den Hall,  Volume  106,  pages  322-323.  It  is  very  brief, 
however,  as  Sir  Horatio  only  broke  his  journey  there  one 
night  on  his  way  to  Hipsley.  Unfortunately  there  is  no 
illustration  of  it  to  accompany  the  text,  because  as  the 


PREFACE  XXV 

accomplished  author  only  stayed  for  bed  and  breakfast  he 
had  not  even  time  to  sketch  the  fagade.  The  house  is  a 
comfortable  red-brick  of  the  time  of  Charles  I.  It  stands 
on  a  slight  eminence  at  the  eastern  extremity  of  the  Folden 
Hills.  High  Cliff  is  visible  on  a  clear  day.  There  is  a 
mounting-block  beside  the  front  door,  which  is  an  excellent 
specimen  of  Early  English;  and  the  same  applies  to  sev- 
eral querns  on  the  terraces.  The  carving  over  the  porch 
is  slightly  defaced,  but  is  undoubtedly  a  fine  example  of 
Late  Jacobean,  Sir  Horatio  takes  occasion  to  correct  the 
popular  fallacy  that  the  present  manor-house  stands  on 
the  site  of  a  former  one,  dating  from  the  Conquest,  The 
old  one  is  half  a  mile  away  in  the  corner  of  the  park,  and 
the  hunting  tower  and  a  fragment  of  a  wall  still  remain. 

The  present  writer  has  no  authority  to  divulge  the  means 
by  which  several  fragments  of  the  work  of  this  very  re- 
markable Author  have  come  into  his  hands.  But  he  has 
long  felt  that  the  work  of  this  Author  is  very  imperfectly 
known,  and  where  known  very  inadequately  appreciated  in 
England.  Therefore,  in  venturing  to  present  this  slight 
fragment  in  a  shape  that  makes  it  accessible  to  all,  it  has 
been  his  aim  to  adapt  it  as  far  as  possible  to  the  needs  of 
a  wide  public. 

In  throwing  it  somewhat  arbitrarily  into  the  form  of  a 
novel  we  defer  to  the  prejudice  of  the  age;  and  by  invest- 
ing it  with  all  the  dulness  at  our  command  believe  we  are 
dissociating  ourselves  as  far  as  possible  from  the , design 
of  the  original  Author,  who  intended  entertainment  only, 
and  that  in  our  humble  way  we  are  doing  something  to 
reinstate  this  heroic  figure  in  something  of  a  former  self- 
complacency  which  has  long  been  the  admiration  of  him- 
jelf  and  all  who  know  him.  Even  at  the  risk  of  becoming 
dramatised  ourselves  by  the  illustrious  Author  we  feel  we 
cannot  too  strongly  repudiate  the  attitude  he  has  allowed 
himself  to  adopt,  or  too  keenly  resent  the  audacity  of  his 
conception.  By  an  invincible  prolixity,  however,  of  which 
the  novel  has  long  been  the  chosen  vehicle,  we  shall  en- 
deavour to  soften  these  affronts,  surrender  to  the  heroic 
subject  a  little  of  the  dignity  of  his  former  condition,  and 


xxvi  PREFACE 

replace  him,  as  it  were,  in  the  centre  of  his  gravity.  We 
at  least  cannot  find  it  in  our  heart  to  treat  of  him  in  a 
spirit  of  persiflage.  The  Author  himself  may  have  no 
reverence  for  the  best  our  country  has  to  offer,  hut  let  not 
us  forget  our  birthright.  Our  subject  is  English  of  the 
English;  let  us  yield  to  him  therefore  every  morsel  of  the 
solemnity  which  is  his  due.  Surely  it  would  be  highly  im- 
proper for  a  county  magnate  to  be  wafted  to  the  local 
cattle  show  upon  Arcadian  airs! 

Let  an  incomparable  tedium  avenge  the  violation  of  a 
sacred  memory.  Still,  dulness  is  not  always  so  easy  as  it 
looks.  We  have  yet  to  gauae  the  measure  of  our  subject's 
susceptibility.  A  thistle  blowing  among  his  turnips  may 
lead  him  down  a  bypath  to  the  virgin  meadows  of  romance, 
or  he  may  stray  at  eve  into  a  haunted  brake.  Gentlemen 
as  austere  as  he  have  found  themselves  ere  now  enmeshed 
in  little  copses  wild  and  overblown  with  poetry,  that  de- 
moralising  weed.  These  things  are  hardly  likely,  but  he 
who  touches  upon  chivalry  is  hardly  wise  to  ignore  the 
romantic  possibilities  in  a  latter-day  Don  Quixote.  The 
reader  also  may  be  highly  strung.  In  that  case  our  vigi- 
lance must  be  redoubled,  for  a  word  may  become  a  thing 
of  interest;  a  note  of  exclamation  may  arrest;  in  some 
harmless  phrase  may  lurk  strange  glamour;  a  name  may 
captivate  the  ear;  the  mention  of  a  woman  may  he  as 
thrilling  as  Friday's  footprint  on  the  sand. 

For  the  rest  this  picture  of  a  latter-day  Don  Quixote  has 
all  the  pathos  of  the  commonplace.  The  edifying  thing 
upon  whose  comic  tribulations  we  have  ventured  to  base 
our  story  is  no  hermaphrodite,  no  freak  of  nature,  no 
monstrosity  in  flesh.  Our  hero  is  physically  perfect  with 
two  hands  and  ten  toes,  ruddy  of  visage,  a  sound  sleeper, 
and  without  any  trace  of  a  valetudinarian  habit,  if  we  ex- 
cept a  slight  tendency  to  deafness  in  his  left  ear,  the  result 
of  an  attack  of  scarlatina  which  visited  him  at  his  private 
school  as  a  very  small  boy  indeed.  A  poor  enough  figure 
for  the  hero  of  a  novel  certainly,  particularly  as  zve  have 
to  confess  that,  in  addition  to  his  rude  and  unromantic 
health,  he  is  no  longer  in  the  flush  of  youth.    In  fact,  he 


PREFACE  xxvii 

is  the  staidest  man  who  ever  attended  a  parish  council,  and 
was  iirst  nominated  as  "  Vicar* s  Warden  "  in  1863.  He 
is  a  man  with  a  grown-up  family,  and  the  only  illu- 
sions that  are  left  to  him  are  not  of  the  stuff  that  dreams 
are  made.  But  he  owes  his  appearance  in  our  pages  to 
the  fact  that  he  is  a  man  belonging  by  right  of  birth  to  the 
Twelfth  Century  after  Christ,  projected  without  rhyme  or 
reason  into  our  enlightened  Twentieth.  He  is  a  survival 
of  the  Mediccval,  the  golden  age  of  knighthood,  when  it 
was  not  improper  for  your  urban  burgess  to  strap  a  dagger 
to  his  stomach,  and  paterfamilias  stalked  to  church  in 
cliain-mail  armour.  He  is  handed  down  to  us  from  eight 
hundred  years  ago  in  all  his  authenticity.  He  has  been 
preserved  miraculously  like  a  saurian  embedded  in  a  rock. 
Nothing  is  changed  in  him  but  the  time  of  day,  his  hatter 
and  his  tailor.  He  no  longer  wears  the  bassinet  as  when 
he  rode  to  Runnymede  to  put  his  mark  to  Magna  Charta. 
In  our  Utopia  he  sits  in  Parliament  in  a  black  silk  hat. 
But  scratch  him,  and  you  find  the  feudal  baron.  An  inch 
below  Poole  and  Lock  lurks  the  Inordinate.  Touch  that — 
nay,  only  so  much  as  gaze  upon  it — and  he  is  prepared  to 
break  your  costard  or  to  cleave  you  to  the  chine,  although 
Progress  has  bereft  him  of  any  nicer  weapon  at  this  hour 
than  the  ferrule  of  his  umbrella  or  the  point  of  his  shoot- 
ing-seat, both  of  which  were  made  in  Birmingham,  the 
sacred  fount  whence  our  culture  flows.  Does  it  not  seem 
a  pity,  now  that  King  Romance  is  born  again,  and  the  gen- 
tle publisher  waxes  upon  Wardour  Street  and  grows  fat 
with  incredible  editions,  that  our  hero,  equipped  with  the 
skin  and  bone  of  an  imperious  popularity,  did  not  learn  of 
his  pastors  and  his  masters  "  By  my  halidom ! "  instead  of 
"  Don't  you  knowf  " 


CHAPTER 
I 

II 
III 
IV 

V 

VI 

VII 

VIII 

IX 

X 

XI 

XII 

XIII 

XIV 

XV 

XVI 

XVII 

XVIII 

XIX 

XX 

XXI 

XXI7 
XXIII 
XXIV 

XXV 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Presents    an     English     Gentleman     in    the 

Bosom  of  His  Family i 

Uncle  Charles 15 

One  of  the  Die-hards 25 

Lord  Chesterfield  to  His  Son 36 

A  Private  View  of  the  Feudal  Spirit     ...     45 
Foreshadows  the  Need  for  a  Hero  and  a  Hero- 
ine       55 

Le  Nouveau  Regime 64 

Enter  the  True  Prince 74 

Startling  Development  of  the  Heroine  ...    83 

Cet  Animal  est  Tres   Mechant 94 

In  the  Temple  of  Diana 105 

Maud  Wayling 112 

Affords   the    Spectacle   of   a   Woman   of   the 

World  Coping  with  Difficulties      ....   125 
In  Which  a  Bomb  Is  Thrown  Right  into  the 

Middle  of  the  Story i35 

L'^GoisME  A  Deux i39 

The   Nobleman   out  of  the   Novelette    .     .     .155 

An  Excursion  into  Sentiment 166 

Lady  Bountiful  and  a  Young  Intellectual     .  176 

Two  ON  a  Tower 185 

Preparations  for  Comedy 198 

In  Which  the  First  Comedian  Makes  His  Bow 
Before  an  Appreciative  Audience     ....  202 

The  Jumping  of  the  Lesser  Wits 215 

A  Descent  into  the  Avernus  of  Broad  Farce  .  224 
In  Which  Mr,  Burchell  Cries  "Fudge!"  .  .  238 
Iphigenia 252 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XXVI    In  Which  Two  Matrimonial  Richmonds  Take 

THE  Field 259 

XXVII    Provides     Opportunity    for    a     Little    Moral 

Teaching 271 

XXVIII    Pariah  in  the  Name  of  Love 279 

XXIX    Two  Women 290 

XXX    In  the  Maelstrom 294 

XXXI    In  Which  Our  Hero  Takes  Down  His  Battle- 
axe      301 

XXXII    Encounter  Between  a  Dogcart  and  an  Omnibus  311 

XXXIII  Tribulations    of   a    Middle-aged    Peer   at   the 

Hands  of  Woman 315 

XXXIV  Providential  Behaviour  of  Old  Pearce    .     .     .  328 
XXXV    In  Which  We  Find  the  First  Comedian  Once 

More  in  a  Happy  Vein 342 

XXXVI    Enter  a  Messenger  from  the  Courts  of  Hymen  350 

XXXVII    The  Lady  Bosket  at  Home 360 

XXXVIII    In  Which   Mr.   Breffit  the  Younger   Puts  a 

Hyphen  to  His  Name 373 

XXXIX    The   Last   Night 387 

XL    In  Which  Mr.  Breffit  the  Elder  Writes  Off 

Another  Little  Item  of  His  Account   .     .     .  393 

XLI    Barbed  Wire   .     .  404 

XLII    Ad  Gloria m  Dei  et  In  Memoriam  Broken  .     .421 

XLIII    Mother  and  Daughter 425 

XLIV    A  Dweller  on  the  Mountains 436 

XLV    The  Last  Battle 441 

XLVI    At  the  Cottage  on  the  Hill 451 

XLVII    The  Two  Voices 457 

XLVIII    The   Survival  of  the   Fittest:    The   Curtain 

Falls 461 


BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 


CHAPTER  I 

PRESENTS    AN     ENGLISH    GENTLEMAN    IN    THE    BOSOM 
OF   HIS   FAMILY 

BROKE  OF  COVENDEN  had  for  the  enlightenment 
of  his  middle  life  one  son  and  six  daughters.  The 
son  had  learned  already  to  live  beyond  his  income  like  a 
gentleman:  he  had  been  in  the  Blues  nearly  a  year.  His 
tailor  was  the  most  expensive  in  London;  his  clubs  the 
most  exclusive;  his  friends  the  most  numerous;  and  al- 
though he  was  far  too  patrician  to  pay  his  bills,  all  the 
world  deemed  it  an  honour  to  serve  him.  Nature  had 
deemed  it  an  honour  as  well.  She  had  formed  his  person, 
polished  his  skin,  and  turned  his  features  with  such  fas- 
tidious care  that  had  Reason  held  her  court  in  these  ex- 
ternal parts  he  would  have  been  worthy  of  his  pedestal 
in  any  of  her  galleries.  Connoisseurs  were  agreed,  how- 
ever, and  among  them  you  might  count  his  mother,  that 
the  upper  storey  had  been  modelled  somewhat  primitively 
for  the  work  to  be  a  masterpiece. 

The  daughters  had  been  educated  in  a  Spartan  manner. 
In  the  technical  metaphor  of  their  uncle  Charles,  "  The 
little  fillies  had  been  broken  before  they  had  their  teeth." 
This  was  one  of  many  privileges  they  owed  to  the  fore- 
sight of  their  mother,  that  austere  lady  who  held  the  opin- 
ion that  girls  without  money  could  not  afford  to  keep 
minds  of  their  own — until  they  were  married,  that  was. 
A  glance  at  their  noses,  those  famous  and  unfortunate 
emblems  of  their  race,  at  their  clear  and  candid  eyes,  at 

I 


2  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

the  honest  blood  in  their  cheeks,  and  you  would  have  seen 
at  once  that  here  was  a  team  to  respond  to  the  hand's 
lightest  pressure. 

Their  father  was  their  friend  and  slave.  In  all  that 
pertained  to  his  name  his  pride  was  invincible.  And  these 
lusty  creatures,  wearing  the  stamp  of  Broke  without  em- 
bellishment, were  as  priceless  in  his  eyes  as  the  acres  that 
had  bred  them,  and  the  pedigree  that  had  evoked  their 
being.  They  were  inalienable  bloodstock;,  their  names 
were  in  the  book.  But  their  mother,  who  had  to  represent 
their  qualities  to  the  world,  had  sadly  to  confess  that  they 
had  not  a  penny  apiece  to  their  dot;  that  their  looks  had 
all  foregathered  in  their  preposterous  noses;  that  their 
minds  were  centred  wholly  upon  horseflesh — of  great 
service  to  man  no  doubt,  but  hardly  his  vade-mecum. 
How  she  was  to  find  husbands  for  them  she  did  not  know, 
seeing  that  their  horoscopes  had  been  cast  in  an  age  of 
competition,  when  every  girl  was  equipped  with  beauty, 
charm,  a  nasal  accent,  or  a  million  sterling.  And  there 
were  phenomena,  as  the  newspapers  were  never  tired  of 
telling  her,  who  had  all  these  gifts  in  one. 

Their  father  would  hear  no  complaints  of  them,  how- 
ever. With  his  great  guffaw  would  he  vow — and  if  there 
was  a  suspicion  of  vainglory  in  it,  do  not  forget  he  was  a 
signal  member  of  his  nation — that  he  would  not  have  them 
otherwise  by  so  much  as  a  hair.  They  were  Brokes,  every 
clean  inch  of  them,  outside  and  inside,  top  to  toe ;  he  would 
ask  what  they  wanted  with  good  looks  and  accomplish- 
ments and  the  fal-lals  of  the  middle-classes? 

At  eight  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  the  seventeenth 
anniversary  of  the  birth  of  his  youngest  daughter,  under 
whose  inauspicious  star  we  begin  our  story.  Broke  having 
fortified  his  household  with  prayer,  in  order  to  prosper  the 
souls  of  the  servants,  sat  down  to  breakfast  with  his  wife. 
They  were  alone.  A  slight  excess  of  amenity  on  the  part 
of  Mrs.  Broke  told  the  ministers  in  attendance  that  the 
world  this  morning  was  awry. 

The  redoubtable  six  daughters  of  the  house  had  not  only 
missed  prayers  altogether,  but  were  actually  late  for  break- 


PRESENTS  AN  ENGLISH  GENTLEMAN        3 

fast.  An  account  would  have  to  be  rendered.  Antiquity 
could  hardly  furnish  a  parallel.  The  laws  of  the  Medes 
and  Persians  might  change;  the  Greek  Kalends  might  ar- 
rive; the  earth  might  be  struck  by  a  comet,  but  eight 
o'clock  was  the  hour  at  which  they  sounded  the  gong  at 
Covenden  Hall. 

Mrs.  Broke  was  a  superb  disciplinarian,  and  born  to 
organize.  She  ordered  her  household  like  a  camp,  and 
recommended  herself  to  Providence  by  a  really  wonderful 
vigilance.  Waste  in  that  house  there  was  not;  no  detail 
was  too  trivial  for  her  personal  attention.  In  the  course 
of  a  year  she  reclaimed  the  pittance  of  a  younger  son  by 
force  of  management.  Indeed,  if  Broke  had  not  rejoiced 
in  the  possession  of  one  of  this  salutary  spirit  to  trim  his 
affairs,  foreign  and  domestic,  the  ever-impending  crash 
must  have  fallen  on  his  ears  long  before  the  period  at 
which  we  find  him. 

She  was  a  notable  person,  even  in  the  day  of  the  emanci- 
pation of  her  sex,  a  fine  example  of  "  the  wholesome  mind 
in  the  wholesome  body  " ;  the  beau  ideal  of  British  mother- 
hood among  a  people  so  divinely  practical.  But  she  was 
even  more.  Wherever  we  find  a  furtive  laughter  at  the 
world  let  us  seek  for  disillusion.  Her  mellow  note  was 
evidence  that  she  knew  how  to  look  at  life.  She  had 
achieved,  for  her  sex,  the  somewhat  gross  feat  of  viewing 
it  with  the  naked  eye ;  yet  had  hardly  surrendered  a  feather 
of  her  femininity  in  a  behaviour  so  unladylike.  That  her 
fibres  had  coarsened  a  little  she  would  have  been  the  first 
to  confess,  but  was  not  that  the  penalty  for  looking  at  the 
ugly  thing?  The  gazers  on  the  Gorgon  did  not  get  off 
so  easily. 

It  was  pleasant  to  see  her  in  her  plain  morning  dress. 
Capability  was  stamped  on  every  line  of  that  placid  ex- 
terior. There  was  also  dignity;  those  urbane  reserves; 
that  charming  candour  so  indispensable  to  a  woman  of  the 
world.  This  animated  serenity  was  always  there.  It  was 
extended  to  her  family  with  the  same  unfailing  liberality 
as  to  members  of  the  Government  and  persons  accredited 
to  the  Court  of  St.  James  when  they  took  her  in  to  dinner 


4  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

in  town.  Secretly  her  daughters  dreaded  it.  In  the  sim- 
plicity of  their  childlike  hearts  they  feared  it  a  great  deal 
more  than  they  need  have  done.  But  their  instincts  had 
always  perceived  a  gleam  of  steel  beneath  the  velvet,  a 
gauntlet  of  iron  under  the  glove.  Such  a  gracious  im- 
mobility was  a  curtain,  a  mask:  if  only  they  could  have 
been  sure  of  finding  something  real  behind  it,  they  might 
have  learned  to  take  their  courage  in  their  hands  and 
tear  it  down. 

A  look  of  amused  indulgence  lurked  in  the  corners  of 
Mrs.  Broke's  mouth  as  she  regarded  the  vacant  places  at 
the  table. 

"  How  busy  the  girls  must  be  this  morning !  It  is  so 
unlike  them  to  forget  a  meal !  " 

"  They  were  not  dancing  last  night  ?  "  Broke  asked. 

"  Oh,  no !  They  were  in  bed  by  ten.  I  heard  their 
voices  on  the  lawn  at  six." 

"  Better  keep  the  bacon  and  icofifee  hot,  anyhow." 

"  Pray  don't  trouble,  Porson,"  said  Mrs.  Broke,  as  the 
butler  began  to  hover  about  the  side  table. 

Broke  was  soon  entrenched  behind  his  morning  paper, 
while  his  wife  read  the  more  enticing  of  her  letters.  The 
first  chanced  to  be  a  piece  of  cardboard  in  these  terms: 
"  The  Lady  Salmon  At  Home — Toplands — 22nd  February. 
Dancing  9  to  3."  On  the  top  was  written,  "  The  Honble. 
Mrs.  Broke  and  party." 

With  a  demure  smile  the  recipient  contrived  to  get  this 
document  across  the  table  and  past  the  barrier  of  the 
morning's  news.  Broke  lowered  his  paper  for  a  moment 
and  was  seen  to  read.  In  the  act  he  might  also  have  been 
seen  to  be  frowning  heavily. 

**  Impertinence !  "  he  said. 

"  A  little  uncompromising,  my  dear  ?  " 

"  Not  at  all.     Impertinence !  " 

A  whimsical  little  sigh  escaped  Mrs.  Broke.  It  was  also 
fond,  like  that  of  a  mother  who  opens  the  nursery  door 
and  has  her  ears  assailed  with  a  tin  trumpet  blown  by  a 
petticoated  son  and  heir  who  is  making  a  furious  circuit  of 


PRESENTS  AN  ENGLISH  GENTLEMAN        5 

the  room  with  a  tin  sword,  a  paper  helmet,  and  a  wooden 
charger. 

"  You  were  not  going  to  know  those  people,  I  under- 
stood." 

"  One  must  surrender  a  little  to  the  spirit  of  the  age, 
my  dear." 

"  I — ah,  don't  see  what  the  age  has  got  to  do  with  it.  It 
makes  those  people  no  better.     It  makes  'em  worse." 

Mrs.  Broke  pursed  her  mouth  wooingly.  She  was  an 
oppressively  plain  woman  with  all  the  tricks  of  a  profes- 
sional beauty. 

"If  this  were  the  age  of  idealism  there  might  be  an 
objection  even  to  a  Jew  financier.  But  there  is  surely  no 
need  at  this  time  of  day  to  shy  at  the  gentle  Semite." 

"  I-ah,  deny  that  things  are  as  bad  as  you  say." 

"  Then  you  become  Don  Quixote  at  once.  Wasn't  it 
the  Knight  of  La  Mancha  who  pursued  the  impossible  ideal 
long  after  it  had  become  extinct  ?  And  please  remember, 
my  dear,  that  because  he  ran  a-tilt  at  his  time  and  got 
only  a  broken  head  for  his  pains,  the  world  still  laughs 
at  him." 

"  Rubbish  1" 

"  A  sense  of  humour,  my  dear !  " 

"  I  have  too  much,  unfortunately.  I  wonder  what  those 
people  take  us  for !  " 

*'  It  is  not  so  much  what  they  take  us  for,  it  is  what  we 
are.  When  we  no  longer  deceive  others,  oughtn't  we  to 
give  up  trying  to  deceive  ourselves?" 

"  I— ah,  don't  quite  follow." 

"  You  must  come  off  the  high  horse,  my  dear.  The 
interesting  animal  is  a  little  out  of  date.  Besides,  hasn't 
one  rather  lost  the  art  of  sitting  it?     People  laugh." 

"  Why,  I  don't  know." 

"  There  are  a  thousand  reasons.  Many  of  them  humili- 
ating, rather  sordid." 

"  Money  I — ah,  suppose." 

Broke  spoke  with  the  reluctance  of  intellectual  effort. 

"  You  are  wise  to  make  that  admission." 


6  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  I — ah,  make  no  admission.  We  may  be  rather  hard 
up,  but  we  have  managed  to  rub  along  without  Tom,  Dick, 
and  Harry  up  till  now,  and  I — ah,  don't  see  why  we 
shouldn't  go  on." 

Mrs.  Broke  shook  her  head  archly  at  her  lord.  There 
was  a  gentle  indulgence  also.  She  had  a  very  keen  sense 
of  the  ridiculous. 

Before  either  side  was  able  to  pursue  this  academic 
controversy,  which  in  one  form  or  another  they  were  con- 
tinually up  against,  Broke's  heavy  face  lightened  to  a  look 
of  pleasure.  Voices  sounded  across  the  lawn.  Raised  in 
laughter  and  excitement,  they  were  clear  and  ringing, 
of  a  bell-like  timbre,  to  be  heard  a  long  way  off.  Within 
a  minute  the  girls  streamed  in  through  the  French 
window  of  the  room  in  which  their  father  and  mother 
sat. 

There  was  a  curious  uniformity  in  one  and  all.  Six 
peas  in  a  pod  could  not  have  been  more  absurdly  alike. 
People  had  to  know  them  very  well  indeed  to  be  able  to 
tell  one  from  another.  They  had  an  air  of  being  made 
according  to  regulation.  Every  small  detail  of  them 
seemed  wrought  after  some  arbitrary  pattern  which  had 
the  sanction  of  authority,  like  service  tunics  or  policemen's 
boots  or  helmets.  This  could  not  be  said  to  make  for 
beauty,  indeed  in  the  world's  opinion  they  were  decidedly 
plain,  not  to  say  ugly.  Connoisseurs  in  femininity  were 
apt  to  indulge  in  a  little  humorous  shrug  when  their  names 
were  mentioned. 

The  only  compliment  you  could  pay  them  positively  was 
that  they  were  beautifully  clean.  Even  that  was  not  with- 
out its  pathos,  for  is  it  not  a  painfully  negative  compliment 
to  pay  to  their  sex? — and  here  it  was  eccentuated  with  a 
cruel  sharpness  by  their  old  and  rude  and  shabby  and 
misshapen  clothes.  Their  old  straw  hats,  encircled  by 
weather-stained  black  ribbons,  bore  witness  to  the  fact  that 
more  than  one  summer  and  winter  had  beaten  over  them ; 
their  boots  were  thick  and  clumsy;  their  short  skirts 
flopped  about  gaunt  ankles.  Physically  they  had  nothing 
to  overcome  and  carry  off  their  clothes  which  drooped 


PRESENTS  AN  ENGLISH  GENTLEMAN        7 

dankly  on  their  lean  flanks.  Small  and  thin,  with  a  grey- 
hound's spareness,  eloquent  of  a  life  in  the  open,  they  were 
much  too  wiry  and  fine-drawn  for  feminine  enchantments. 
"  Hard-bitten  beggars,"  their  father  called  them. 

In  colour  they  were  as  the  doe,  and  healthy  as  the  east 
wind.  In  their  faces  was  the  keen  wistfulness  of  the  fox- 
hound. Their  austere  features  thrown  into  too  sudden 
relief  by  the  arch  of  a  perfectly  preposterous  nose,  they 
were  only  saved  from  the  grotesque  by  a  miracle.  Even 
as  it  was,  a  woman  who  was  sensitive  would  not  have  to 
look  far  to  find  tragedy. 

Still,  however,  there  were  those  who  were  not  afraid  to 
admire.  For  if  to  vivid  health  be  added  youth,  to  which 
is  superadded  that  saving  quality  that  goes  by  the  name 
of  breeding,  the  mysterious  aroma  savouring  of  nature  and 
the  soil,  like  the  bouquet  in  wine,  merit  may  be  evolved 
€ven  where  you  look  to  find  it  least.  Many  a  half-pro- 
testing, half-apologetic  portrait  was  furnished  of  them  by 
the  indulgent  people  with  whom  they  were  brought  in  con- 
tact. They  were  compared  now  to  clean-run  horses,  now 
to  Belvoir  entry;  but  as  usual  their  uncle  Charles  trans- 
cended all  in  boldness  of  imagery.  His  dictum  to  his 
sister  was :  "  Those  little  fillies  are  like  that  old  bull-bitch 
of  mine — too  full  o'  breed.  You'll  never  marry  'em,  Jane, 
any  more  than  my  old  bitch  will  ever  take  a  prize  at  a 
show." 

As  they  streamed  in  through  the  open  window,  bearing 
the  February  hoar  on  their  shoes  and  coats  and  in  their 
hair,  they  looked  six  of  the  wholesomest  things  that  ever 
exulted  in  liberty. 

They  were  at  a  fine  pitch  of  excitement.  Adventures 
rare  and  strange  had  befallen  them ;  but  as  all  their  tongues 
were  going  at  once  and  tuned  to  an  epic  fervour  befitting 
their  deeds,  their  father  at  first  was  not  very  much  the 
wiser. 

"Yes,  yes,"  he  said,  "capital  story — devilish  exciting; 
but  if  you've  no  objection  I'd  like  to  know  what  it  is  all 
about.  One  at  a  time — if  you've  no  objection.  Now 
then,  Joan." 


8  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  We've  caught  a  badger,  father,"  said  his  eldest  daugh- 
ter. 

"  No,  father,  we  dug  it  out,"  sang  the  other  five. 

"  No,  old  Joe  dug  it  out,"  said  Joan. 

"  But  we  helped  him,"  said  Margaret. 

"  It  is  a  dog  badger,  father,"  said  Philippa  importantly. 

"Oh,  indeed!" 

"  It  is  e-nor-mous,  father,"  said  Harriet,  with  round  and 
wide  and  earnest  eyes. 

"  So  I  understand." 

"  It  is  very  ugly,  father,"  said  Jane. 

"  And  very  fierce." 

"  And  it  does  look  wicked." 

"  And  it  is  ever  so  shaggy." 

"  And  it  has  got  such  teeth ! "  they  chimed  one  after 
another,  each  standing  upon  her  prescriptive  right  to 
furnish  her  own  description  for  her  sire.  It  was  left  for 
his  youngest  daughter,  however,  to  illuminate  this  mass  of 
detail  with  a  touch  of  realism. 

"And,  oh,  father!"  said  Delia,  "it  can  bite!"  With 
considerable  pride  she  displayed  a  finger  wrapped  in  a 
handkerchief,  spotted  freely  with  blood. 

"  Silly  little  beggar !  "  Her  father  laid  hold  of  her  and 
looked  at  the  wound.  "  Silly  little  kid ! "  He  tapped  a 
cheek  that  was  as  ruddy  as  an  apple. 

Joe  had  been  brought  to  show  the  badger.  That  wizened 
retainer  stood  on  the  lawn  in  his  moleskin  waistcoat,  with 
his  captive  in  a  bag.  Broke  was  haled  into  the  winter 
morning  to  inspect  the  creature.  Nothing  short  of  his 
personal  sanction  could  appease  the  pride  of  its  captors. 
A  word  from  him  was  the  crown  of  any  high  enterprise. 
Mrs.  Broke  also  followed  to  do  it  honour.  She  was  unin- 
vited, and  was  not  interested  in  the  least,  but  it  was  charac- 
teristic of  her  that  she  never  failed  in  any  little  act,  how- 
ever trivial  or  perfunctory,  if  there  was  a  superficial  grace 
in  the  performance  of  it.  She  opened  more  bazaars  than 
any  lady  in  the  county.  Where  another  would  not  have 
taken  the  trouble  to  leave  her  chair,  she  sallied  out  with 
an  alert  smile  of  patronage. 


PRESENTS  AN  ENGLISH  GENTLEMAN        9 

The  comments  of  man  and  wife  on  the  wild-looking 
beast  were  characteristic. 

"  Ugly  devil !  "  said  Broke. 

"  How  very  quaint  and  delightful ! "  said  Mrs.  Broke. 
"  Oh,  you  dear  thing !  It  is  so  clever  of  you  girls  to  have 
caught  it,  Tm  sure.  You  must  be  so  pleased.  You  will 
keep  it  for  a  pet  of  course.  You  must  ask  Joe  to  build  it 
a  hutch.  You  can  take  it  away  now,  Joe;  and  thank  you 
so  much." 

The  badger  being  thus  delicately  dismissed,  its  captors 
sat  down  to  their  belated  meal. 

"  We  found  it  half-way  up  the  hill,  father,  in  the  next 
field  to  the  spinney,"  Broke  was  informed.  "  It  was  near 
the  old  elm  where  we  saw  the  white  owl  in  the  summer." 

"If  you  catch  that,  there  will  be  a  shilling  apiece  for 
you." 

Under  the  spell  cast  by  this  shining  lure  they  began  upon 
their  breakfast.  Abundant  yet  primitive,  it  was  a  feast 
over  which  youth  alone  might  hope  to  triumph.  It  con- 
sisted of  a  huge  dish  heaped  with  bacon,  long  ago  cold  and 
frozen  in  its  grease,  thick  slabs  of  bread,  and  large  cups  of 
very  weak  and  lukewarm  coffee.  Their  appetites  flinched 
from  nothing,  however,  nor  did  they  pause  to  discriminate. 
They  made  short  work  of  a  meal  at  which  a  civilized 
digestion  would  have  shuddered. 

"  The  meet's  at  half -past  eleven — up  at  the  Grove." 

"  Of  course,  father." 

They  nodded  sagely  across  their  coffee-cups. 

"  Whose  turn  to-day  ?  " 

The  question  provoked  a  new  uproar.  Their  tongues 
were  again  unloosed ;  for  a  moment  they  ran  riot  in  a  near 
approach  to  strife.  Broke  cried  "  Chair !  Chair !  "  and 
tapped  the  table  sharply.  Their  sudden  obedience  was 
rather  ludicrous ;  the  loudest  voice  was  quelled  at  once. 
Such  a  sense  of  discipline  was  the  fruit  of  centuries,  no 
doubt ;  they  were  descended  from  generations  of  warriors 
accustomed  to  obey  and  to  be  obeyed. 

**  Now  then,  Joan,  who  rides  ?  " 

"  We  don't  know,  father,"  said  his  eldest  daughter,  with 


10  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

a  face  of  perplexity.  "  The  Doctor  put  his  foot  in  a  rab- 
bit-hole last  week  and  strained  his  oif  fore-leg.  George 
says  we  can't  have  him  out  for  a  fortnight.  And  White- 
nose  has  got  a  hot  hock,  and  Robin  has  been  coughing  in 
the  night." 

"  H'm — unfortunate.     Still,  settle  it  somehow." 

These  sportswomen,  to  have  recourse  again  to  the  tech- 
nical language  of  their  uncle  Charles,  the  master  of  the 
pack,  "  Six  days  a-weekers  every  one,"  had  to  have  their 
privileges  regulated  on  a  fixed  principle.  There  was  a 
limit  to  their  stable.  In  the  height  of  the  season,  if  stress 
of  weather  did  not  intervene  to  give  their  horses  a  rest, 
they  either  had  to  set  days  apart  for  this  purpose,  or  submit 
to  be  mounted  four  at  a  time,  while  the  two  remaining 
did  what  they  could  with  their  bicycles.  The  accident  to 
The  Doctor,  and  the  precarious  condition  of  Whitenose 
and  Robin  had  made  it  imperative  that  a  third  should 
forego  her  claims  to  the  appropriate  mode.  One  and  all 
were  much  too  keen,  however,  to  waive  them  lightly. 
Jane  and  Harriet  retired  by  rotation,  but  none  of  the  more 
fortunate  four  was  able  to  see  that  self-sacrifice  coincided 
with  perfect  equity.  Besides,  is  it  not  eminently  British 
to  insist  on  your  rights  as  an  individual  should  you  happen 
to  possess  any? 

Here  it  was,  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the  house, 
that  anarchy,  the  modern  canker,  showed  a  disposition  to 
rear  its  head  in  an  ancient  virgin  government. 

The  voice  of  Delia  was  heard  in  the  land. 

"  Perhaps  we  might  have  one  of  the  bays  for  to-day," 
said  the  youngest  daughter  of  the  house  in  a  timidly  tenta- 
tive manner. 

She  blushed  to  hear  her  own  voice  in  public.  Alone  in 
that  august  assembly  the  hardihood  seemed  too  immense. 
But  it  is  only  timidity  that  is  cursed  with  a  particular 
kind  of  boldness.  The  next  instant  she  blushed  still  more. 
The  entire  business  of  the  table  was  suspended  while  five 
amazed  faces  turned  towards  her.  Five  coflfee-cups  were 
laid  down  with  an  air  of  resolute  wonder. 

On  three  distinct  counts  Delia's  guilt  was  enormous.     In 


PRESENTS  AN  ENGLISH  GENTLEMAN      ii 

the  first  place  she  had  no  right  to  hold  an  opinion  on  any 
subject,  much  less  to  have  the  effrontery  to  utter  it  before 
their  father.  Again,  if  she  had  a  right,  the  privilege  of 
giving  it  publication  in  that  august  assembly  was  wholly 
precluded  by  her  extreme  youth — she  was  a  whole  year 
younger  than  Harriet,  two  years  younger  than  Jane  and 
Margaret,  three  years  younger  than  Philippa,  and  actually 
four  years  younger  than  Joan !  And,  most  heinous  offence 
of  all,  she  had  been  guilty  of  an  idea !  How  such  a  silly, 
inoffensive  little  kid  had  come  by  such  a  dangerous  imple- 
ment they  could  not  guess.  And  she  dared  to  show  it  off 
before  her  father. 

In  a  painful  silence  they  waited  while  Joan,  the  one 
having  authority,  and  always  their  natural  leader  by  an 
inimitable  force  of  character,  proceeded  to  deal  with  this 
dangerous  heresy. 

"  It  doesn't  seem  right,"  said  that  formidable  young 
woman,  in  a  tone  as  exquisitely  detached  as  that  of  her 
famous  aunt  Emma,  "  to  ride  to  hounds  on  a  coach 
horse.  It  seems  like  making  a  pretence  of  doing  what 
you  can't.  If  one  is  not  to  be  with  hounds,  I  think  one 
ought  to  go  on  a  bicycle.  Besides,  we  have  not  been  used 
to  it." 

The  others  chimed  in  solemnly  to  crush  their  youngest 
sister  with  their  grave  accord.  It  was  a  terrible  disgrace 
for  her,  before  their  father  too,  poor  little  kid!  but  your 
truly  Spartan  nature  does  not  flinch  from  the  infliction  of 
punishment,  even  when  it  is  likely  to  recoil  on  those  who 
wield  the  rod.  But  it  was  left  to  their  father  himself  to 
lay  on  the  severest  stroke. 

**  I  think  you  are  right,  Joan,"  he  said  with  a  gravity  as 
magisterial  as  their  own.  "  It  is  a  fine  point,  but  I — ah, 
endorse  your  view.  Not  that  it  matters,  of  course,  but 
personally  I — ah,  think  it  can  be  considered.  It  has  not 
struck  me  in  that  light  before,  but  now  it  is  pointed  out  the 
spirit  is  sound.  Of  course  you  can  go  on  anything  with 
four  legs  to  it,  if  you  have  not  anything  better,  or  are  not 
used  to — ah,  anything  better ;  but  I  think  you  are  right  if 
you  don't.     It  may  be  drawing  it  a  bit  fine,  but  personally 


12  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

I — ah,  think  one  cannot  be  too  jealous  for  the — ah,  dignity 
of  covert." 

This  piece  of  dialectics,  given  in  the  judicial  syllables  of 
an  admired  Chairman  of  Quarter  Sessions,  thrilled  five 
excited  bosoms  of  those  present  in  that  court.  There  was 
a  sixth — a  sixth  who  had  opened  her  mischievous  blue 
eyes  and  was  laughing  softly,  an  incendiary  for  whom 
happily  neither  the  judge  nor  the  jury,  terribly  in  earnest 
as  they  were,  could  spare  a  thought.  But  the  culprit  her- 
self was  overcome  with  shame.  That  she  had  committed 
an  awful  solecism  had  been  made  ;clear  to  her ;  all  the  same 
she  could  .not  tell  what  it  was.  There  was  a  subtle  twist 
in  her  callow  mind  that  forbade  it  to  appreciate  the  banal- 
ity of  riding  a  coach  horse  to  hounds;  and  worse,  the 
affront  to  custom.  Others  rode  any  sort  of  horse,  why 
not  they?  Probably  it  was  a  new  idea  to  them;  but  to 
others  it  was  not.  Delia's  face  grew  such  a  vivid  scarlet 
that  even  her  father  noticed  it.  The  next  moment  she  was 
trembling  under  his  great  guffaw. 

"  My  dear  child,"  he  said,  "  you  are  not  going  to  be  a 
woman  of  ideas,  are  you  ?  Not  going  to  be  a  second  aunt 
Emma,  eh,  little  girl  ?     Must  be  careful,  must  be  careful." 

Delia  nearly  wept.  That  stroke  cut  very  deep.  Such  a 
reference  had  never  been  made  by  their  father  before, 
although  their  mother  had  long  known  its  value.  The 
culprit  redoubled  her  efforts  to  find  in  what  she  had 
offended.  Like  a  captive  bird  she  beat  against  the  cage 
of  her  intelligence,  but  she  could  not  read  the  secret  of  her 
crime.  Yet  whatever  it  might  be,  she  tried  to  wipe  out 
the  stain  by  an  act  of  public  virtue. 

"  I  will  cycle  to-day,  Joan."     Her  face  was  still  burning. 

"  Indeed,  no,"  said  Joan.  "  That  would  not  be  fair. 
We  would  not  ask  it  of  you."  There  was  a  snub  in  the 
level  voice  that  made  Delia  too  frightened  to  say  another 
word. 

In  the  end  the  question  of  who  should  ride  horses  and 
who  should  ride  bicycles  was  submitted  to  him  most  fitted 
to  decide  it.  As  no  method  of  escaping  the  impasse  was 
vouchsafed  to  the  feminine  intelligence  it  was  clearly  a 


PRESENTS  AN  ENGLISH  GENTLEMAN      13 

case  for  the  higher  court.  Their  faith  in  their  father  was 
most  catholic.  On  the  lightest  or  most  abstruse  point  his 
word  was  law.  He  chose  on  this  occasion,  in  the  fashion 
of  Solomon,  to  expound  his  wisdom  by  a  mechanical 
means. 

"  Better  draw  lots.     Put  your  names  in  a  hat." 

Chance  decreed  that  Delia  must  forfeit  her  claim.  In- 
deed no  less  was  expected  of  that  inexorable  Destiny  which 
never  forgets  to  punish,  although  by  no  means  so  consci- 
entious in  the  matter  of  rewards.  Surely  it  was  just  that 
she  who  had  dared  to  suggest  a  coach  horse  should  be  con- 
demned to  an  even  cruder  means  of  locomotion.  Poor 
little  kid,  on  her  birthday  too !  Still,  it  was  no  part  of  the 
duties  of  Destiny  to  take  cognisance  of  incongruities  of 
that  kind. 

However,  no  sooner  had  all  been  contrived  to  their  satis- 
faction, and  they  had  fallen  to  discussing  the  behaviour  of 
the  frost  and  the  prospect  of  its  going  in  time  for  hounds 
to  do  their  work,  when  their  mother  interposed  in  that 
mild  and  gracious  voice  they  had  cause  to  know  so  well. 

"  I  was  rather  hoping,  girls,  that  you  would  not  hunt 
to-day.  Do  you  think  I  could  persuade  you  to  do  two  or 
three  hours'  reading  with  me  before  luncheon?  It  might 
be  of  service  to  your  minds,  and  I  am  sure  you  will  wish 
to  neglect  no  means  of  improving  them." 

The  faces  of  the  six  Dianas  were  a  picture  of  consterna- 
tion. 

"  As  you  were  not  present  this  morning  at  prayers,  I 
feel  sure  that  two  or  three  hours'  solid  reading  will  help 
you  to  regain  a  little  of  that  which  you  have  lost.  I  am 
sure  we  all  agree  with  dear  aunt  Emma  when  she  says  in 
her  famous  book,  *  that  a  portion  of  the  higher  literature, 
German,  Scandinavian,  or  Chinese  for  preference,  read 
aloud  in  the  home,  morning  or  evening,  or  even  in  the 
middle  of  the  day,  or  at  any  hour  when  one  is  not  in  bed, 
is  to  the  animal  spirit  a  sedative,  and  to  the  understanding 
as  an  iron  tonic'  " 

The  stroke  was  dealt  by  a  mistress  in  the  art.  The  air 
of  deep  maternal  solicitude  that  put  them  back  into  the 


14  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

nursery  at  once,  the  winning  grace,  and,  above  all,  the 
reference  to  the  author  of  Poses  in  the  Opaque,  that  far- 
sought  collection  of  essays  whose  publication  marked  an 
epoch  in  the  world  of  taste,  brought  such  a  flush  to  their 
cheeks  as  nothing  else  could  have  done. 

They  had  not  a  word  to  say  in  mitigation  of  the  ukase. 
To  be  sure  they  were  no  longer  in  the  nursery,  but  their 
discipline  was  a  wonderful  thing.  They  were  physically 
incapable  of  questioning  authority,  even  in  its  most  arbi- 
trary exercise.  In  silence  they  bowed  their  proud  heads, 
and  reapplied  themselves  to  bacon.  If  there  was  a  slightly 
moist  softness  in  the  eyes  of  Delia,  let  it  be  remembered 
that  she  was  a  full  year  the  youngest  of  them  all,  and  pre- 
cisely by  that  length  of  time  was  less  of  a  Broke  than  her 
sisters. 

"  I  think  you  are  a  bit  hard  on  them,"  said  their  father. 
"  Anyhow,  they  shall  go  to-morrow.  But  I  don't  think 
they  will  miss  much;  we  never  have  much  luck  at  the 
Grove.  Besides,  this  frost  may  not  clear  off  after  all ;  and 
even  if  it  does,  the  going  will  be  beastly." 

Such  consolation,  elaborate  as  it  was,  did  not  soften 
their  pangs;  but  it  was  this  sort  of  tenderness  for  them 
that  made  their  father  the  finest  comrade  in  the  world. 
Not  only  was  he  a  god  and  a  hero,  but  a  personal  friend ; 
a  happy  combination  of  qualities  that  implies  that  nature 
of  an  almost  paradoxical  scope. 

Howbeit,  at  this  painful  moment,  when  there  was  no 
more  bacon  left  on  the  dish  and  only  grains  in  the  coffee- 
pot, when,  therefore,  even  that  natural  consolation  had 
begun  to  fail,  a  diversion  was  caused  by  the  opening  of 
the  door,  and  the  announcement — 

"  Lord  Bosket." 


CHAPTER  II 

UNCLE  CHARLES 

AN  odd  little  man  waddled  in.  His  legs  were  so 
crooked  with  addiction  to  the  saddle  that  he  looked  as 
painfully  out  of  his  element  in  a  pedestrian  mode  as  a 
mariner  on  dry  land.  His  face  and  head  were  as  bald  as 
a  toad's — the  Sieur  de  Montaigne's,  if  the  Sieur  had  not 
had  a  little  moustache.  The  colour  of  his  skin,  empurpled 
by  the  wind  and  rain,  was  that  of  a  tomato ;  not  only  brave 
in  good  living  and  the  open  air,  but  with  also  a  shine  of 
wassail  in  it,  a  puffy  lustre  that  enhanced  the  bloom  of  his 
complexion  while  it  blurred  the  ferret-like  sharpness  of 
his  face.  His  somewhat  debased  features  were  suffused 
with  melancholy,  partly  querulous  and  partly  humorous, 
which  lent  him  the  slightly  whimsical  air  of  one  who  has 
the  habit  of  looking  at  things  with  his  own  peculiar  eyes. 
He  was  as  one  who  acquiesces  in  his  lot  against  his  judg- 
ment, yet  shrinks  from  seeking  another  lest,  so  poor  in  his 
opinion  of  himself  and  the  world  in  general,  he  should 
find  a  worse.  In  his  mouth  was  a  straw ;  in  his  hunting- 
stock  an  enormous  pin  cast  in  the  device  of  a  fox;  a  fur- 
lined  great-coat  was  thrown  back  to  display  his  "pink," 
and  as  he  waddled  in  twirling  his  velvet  cap  on  the  end 
of  his  whip  it  was  not  easy  for  any  save  the  very  expert 
in  the  fine  shades  of  gentility  to  tell  where  the  groom  ended 
and  the  gentleman  began. 

"  Mornin',"  he  said,  with  a  large  gesture  that  embraced 
one  and  all  in  a  manner  which  was  a  wonderful  blend  of 
the  affectionate  and  the  casual.  "  How  are  my  little 
cockyoly  birds  this  mornin'  ?  Pert  as  robins,  and  as  sharp 
as  hawks?  peckin',  are  they?  Noses  in  the  manger? 
Toppin'  up  with  porridge  and  bacon  and  a  bit  o'  marma- 

15 


i6  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

lade  ?  What,  no  marmalade !  Here,  my  boy,  the  marma- 
lade AT  once." 

While  this  edible  was  being  procured  by  the  butler,  he 
wagged  his  head  and  muttered,  "  Must  have  marmalade," 
in  various  keys.  On  its  appearance  he  examined  it  as 
critically  as  a  bushel  of  oats  for  a  favourite  mare,  and  set 
out  on  a  tour  of  the  table,  dabbing  a  large  spoonful  on  the 
plate  of  each  of  his  nieces,  ending  with  Delia,  upon  whom 
he  bestowed  "  one  extry  for  little  Miss  Muffit." 

"  And  what's  the  matter  with  her  finger  ?  " 

"  A  badger  has  bitten  it,  uncle  Charles,"  said  Delia,  with 
considerable  pride. 

"  A  badger  has  bitten  it.  Lord-love-a-duck !  Dig 
badgers  and  ichthye-what-do-you-call-ems  out  o'  the 
kitchen  garden,  I  suppose  ?  " 

*'  Out  of  the  spinney,  uncle  Charles,"  they  chimed  to- 
gether. 

A  second  account  of  the  great  event,  as  animated  and 
incoherent  as  the  first,  was  furnished  for  this  indulgent 
sportsman. 

"  Marvellous ! — but  we'll  be  diggin'  out  foxes  in  a  brace 
o'  shakes,"  said  he,  when  at  last  he  could  get  in  a  word. 
"We  shall  have  the  sun  before  you  can  say  'Knife!' 
The  goin'  is  on  the  hard  side  at  present,  but  wait  a  bit  and 
it  will  be  all  right." 

Somehow  this  announcement  fell  flat.  His  nieces  failed 
to  beacon  in  response,  which  they  did  invariably,  no  less 
being  demanded  of  them  by  him  and  by  that  particular 
topic.  A  reaction  was  provoked  at  once;  slight,  to  be 
sure,  yet  sufficient  to  urge  him  to  fly  to  the  specific  for  his 
temperament. 

"  Person,"  he  said,  glancing  about  querulously.  "  Where 
IS  the  old  fool!  Why  don't  you  bring  that  whisky  and 
soda,  you  stoopid  old  feller?" 

"  I  beg  your  lordship's  pardon." 

Already  the  butler  was  toddling  towards  him  with  a 
tray  of  spirits  and  mineral  waters.  The  specific  had  not 
been  ordered;  but  experience  had  taught  Porson  to  take 
time  by  the  forelock. 


UNCLE  CHARLES  17 

Measuring  out  one  half -penny  worth  of  soda-water  to 
an  intolerable  deal  of  whisky,  my  lord  dispatched  the 
mixture  in  a  consummate  manner  with  one  jerk  of  the 
hand.  He  shut  his  eyes  and  then  re-opened  them  slowly 
in  an  exercise  of  the  critical  faculty. 

"  Good  water,"  he  said.  "  Very  good  water,  but  the 
whisky's  poisonous.  Funny  thing,  I  never  come  into  this 
house  without  having  to  lodge  an  objection.  It'll  have  to 
be  brought  before  the  Stewards.  Sort  of  thing  that  gets 
a  house  a  bad  name.  The  whisky's  raw ;  get  me  some  tur- 
pentine to  cool  my  tongue.     Have  this  in  the  keg  ?  " 

"  Yes,  my  lord." 

"Keep  it  in  the  wood?" 

"  Yes,  my  lord." 

"  'Straordinary  thing !  Do  you  buy  it  or  do  they  pay 
you  to  take  it  away  ?  " 

"  I  beg  your  lordship's  pardon,  but  this  came  from 
Hipsley  with  your  lordship's  compliments  as  a  Christmas 
gift." 

"  What— what— what— what— what?  " 

Querulously  Lord  Bosket  placed  his  hand  behind  his 
ear.  The  butler's  patient  repetition  of  his  statement  be- 
longed to  the  region  of  art. 

"  You  must  be  wrong,  my  boy,  you  must  be  wrong." 

"  I  have  the  label,  my  lord." 

"  Then  send  that  whisky  back  and  tell  Paling  you  are  to 
have  a  keg  of  the  '  special '  with  the  green  ticket,  and 
mind  you  look  at  the  bung.  Ask  Paling  what  he  means 
by  it.     God  bless  my  soul,  what  are  things  coming  to  ?  " 

This  urgent  matter  being  at  last  adjusted.  Lord  Bosket 
turned  an  eye  of  petulant  inquiry  upon  his  nieces. 

"  Which  of  you  little  fillies  has  got  a  birthday  this 
momin'  ?  " 

Delia  shifted  shy  eyes  up  to  him. 

"  Oh,  it's  the  young  one,  is  it !  May  I  ask  what's  your 
fancy,  miss  ?  " 

"  If  you  please,  Uncle  Charles,  I  should  like  a  horse,*' 
said  Delia,  with  an  air  which  if  very  timid  was  also  very 
full  of  decision. 


i8  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  You  would  like  a  horse.  'Straordinary  how  great 
minds  think  alike.  It  happens,  miss,  that  a  horse  is  just 
what  I've  brought  you." 

"  Oh,  Uncle  Charles !  "  said  Delia,  with  a  quick  heighten- 
ing of  colour. 

"  A  pretty  little  horse  for  a  pretty  little  lady.  And 
manners — well,  I  wish  your  Aunt  Emma  would  take  pat- 
tern.    Pretty  bit  o'  stuff." 

"  You  ought  not  to  do  it,  Charles,"  said  Broke.  "  How 
many  more  are  you  going  to  give  them  ?  " 

"What  do  you  know  about  it,  my  boy?  If  now  and 
then  I  can't  find  a  mount  for  my  own  fillies  it's  a  pity. 
They  are  the  only  ones  I've  got,  and  all  with  a  weakness 
for  good  cattle,  same  as  me.  Coin'  to  hunt  the  fox  this 
mornin' — eh,  little  gals?  We  shall  have  you  larking  over 
those  fences.  Hallo,  here  comes  Mr.  Sun!  What  did  I 
say !  Nobody'll  know  there's  been  a  frost  in  another  hour. 
Saw  Padgett  as  I  came  by.  He  says  the  varmints  are  as 
thick  in  the  spinney  as  eels  in  a  mill  dam." 

But  for  once  his  nieces  failed  to  respond  to  his  enthusi- 
asm. As  a  rule  eager  faces  greeted  the  lightest  allusion 
to  the  chase,  but  to-day  even  their  interest  seemed  per- 
functory. He  looked  at  them,  and  then  at  their  mother 
with  his  eye  of  whimsical  inquiry. 

"  They  are  comin',  Jane  ?  " 

"  Not  to-day,  Charles,"  said  his  sister  in  her  mild  voice. 

"Wh-a-a-at?" 

Lord  Bosket  removed  the  straw  from  his  mouth  with 
extraordinary  resolution. 

"  I  am  sincerely  sorry,  Charles,"  said  his  sister,  with  a 
demure  mischief  in  her  eyes. 

"  Sorry  be  damned.  Are  they  goin'  to  do  five-finger 
exercises,  or  what  ?  " 

"  We  hope  to  read  a  little  German  philosophy  this  morn- 
ing." 

My  lord  returned  the  straw  to  his  mouth  with  a  reso- 
lution even  more  extraordinary  than  that  with  which  he 
had  taken  it  out. 

*'  Well,  that's  a  good  'un.     Jane,  you've  taken  the  bun. 


UNCLE  CHARLES  19 

The  six  cleverest  customers  in  the  county  readin'  German 
philosophy !  That's  a  pretty  tale  to  pitch,  upon  my  Sam ! 
Why,  my  good  woman,  it  is  the  meet  o'  the  year.  They 
are  runnin'  a  special  from  town." 

Lord  Bosket  appealed  to  his  brother-in-law. 

"  What  do  you  say,  Edmund  ?  " 

"  I — ah,  think  Jane  is  a  bit  hard  on  them,"  said  Broke, 
with  a  dignified  hesitation. 

Uncle  Charles  was  aware,  however,  that  there  could  be 
no  redress  from  this  quarter. 

"  Here's  the  sun  in  pink,"  he  went  on,  rising  to  elo- 
quence, for  here  was  a  grievance  indeed ;  "  and  the  frost 
gone  to  ground,  and  everything  as  right  as  rain,  and  you 
are  goin'  to  keep  the  headstall  on  those  little  gals,  and 
cram  'em  with  German.  I'm  not  much  of  a  hand  at  re- 
ligion, Jane,  but  if  you've  been  studyin'  how  to  crab  the 
Almighty,  I  reckon  you  have  about  brought  it  off  this 
time.  If  you  are  not  makin'  a  mockery  of  one  of  his 
blessed  huntin'  mornin's,  and  He  don't  send  many,  I'll 
never  throw  my  leg  over  a  saddle  any  more.  It's 
mons'rous.  Why,  do  you  know  what  I  said  last  night  to 
old  Paunche  ?  I  said,  *  General,  we're  not  swells,  we're 
not ;  we're  not  the  Belvoir,  and  we're  not  the  Quorn ;  but 
if  we  can't  show  these  Cockney  sports  a  thing  or  two,  I'll 
hand  in  my  portfolio.  General,'  I  said,  ''we'll  have  out 
the  ladies,  and  we'll  have  out  those  little  fillies  o'  mine, 
every  damned  Broke  of  'em' — those  were  my  words — 
*  and  they  shall  show  'em  the  sort  we  are  in  the  Parkshire. 
No  pace,  haven't  we!  We'll  give  'em  twenty  minutes  on 
the  grass,  and  if  they  can't  live  with  Vanity  and  our  little 
Miss  Muffits,  I'll  die  a  vegetarian.  General,'  I  said,  '  those 
little  fillies  are  not  fashion-platers,  they're  not,  no  new- 
fangledness  in  that  stable;  they're  not  Hyde  Parkers 
neither ;  none  o'  your  waltzin'  on  the  tan ;  and  they  are 
cut  nearly  as  pretty  about  the  muzzle  as  their  uncle 
Charles,  but  when  they  are  out  for  blood  they'll  have  those 
door-handles  o'  theirs  in  front  of  the  devil,  or  they'll  know 
the  reason.' " 

Lord  Bosket  paused  to  reinforce  his  eloquence  with  a 


20  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

further  application  of  his  "  mixture."  While  he  was  thus 
engaged  his  six  young  nieces  bent  wistful  eyes  upon  their 
mother.  They  could  no  longer  keep  a  cloak  over  their 
feelings,  and  were  compelled  to  lower  their  pride  a  point. 
Their  faces  were  brilliant  now;  and  the  lustre  of  their 
eyes,  which  no  stoicism  could  repress,  came  near  to  lend- 
ing them  that  glamour  of  which  nature  had  deprived  them. 
Their  mother,  observing  it,  wished  a  little  sorrowfully 
that  the  secret  was  hers  of  evoking  it  at  all  times  and  sea- 
sons.    All  the  same,  she  did  not  relent. 

Lord  Bosket,  stimulated  to  new  valour,  returned  to  the 
attack.  He  was  nonplussed,  however,  by  an  exterior 
which,  gracious  as  it  was,  remained  impervious  to  anything 
so  gross  as  the  invective  of  a  male  relation.  Broke  was 
with  him  entirely,  as  he  was  as  a  rule  where  his  girls  were 
concerned ;  but  had  not  his  ideal  demanded  that  he  should 
remain  a  neutral,  experience  had  taught  him  that  woman 
was  a  creature  over  whom  human  reason,  even  when  dis- 
pensed by  man,  the  fount  of  it,  was  not  likely  to  prevail. 
Besides,  you  do  not  look  to  Hannibal  to  usurp  the  func- 
tions of  the  drill  sergeant.  Therefore  he  was  content  to 
restrict  his  championship  of  the  cause  so  gallantly  espoused 
by  his  brother-in-law  to  grim  laughter  at  the  points  made 
by  that  intrepid  sportsman. 

"  German  philosophy,"  said  Uncle  Charles,  thrusting  his 
hands  in  his  pockets  and  growing  quite  querulous.  "  I 
thought  you  were  a  woman  o'  sense,  Jane,  but  you  are  a 
stable  companion  to  Emma.  The  mornin'  I  married  that 
woman  there  might  well  be  a  change  in  the  weather.  Ed- 
mund, there's  been  a  mistake.  Jane  and  I  ought  to  have 
been  born  the  other  way  about.  You  and  I  would  ha' 
got  on  together  like  a  house  on  fire.  We'd  be  huntin'  the 
fox  all  day  and  playin'  double-dummy  bridge  all  night; 
while  Jane  and  Emma  could  be  sittin'  in  a  Methodist 
chapel  readin'  the  Spectator.  There's  been  a  mistake,  old 
son.  It  would  ha'  been  such  a  simple  thing  for  that 
damned  fool  nature  to  handicap  us  accordin'  to  the  code — 
weight  for  age  and  a  five-pound  penalty.     But  no,  she 


UNCLE  CHARLES  21 

must  try  something  fancy,  and  a  pretty  mess  she's  made. 
There  are  poor  old  knackers  that  can't  push  one  leg  before 
the  other  and  have  never  won  a  plate,  that  have  got  their 
ten  pounds  extry,  and  there  are  smart  young  three-year- 
olds  that  don't  carry  an  ounce.  I  never  saw  such  handi- 
capping in  my  life." 

Thus  the  Right  Honourable  Charles  Chevenix,  thirteenth 
Baron  Bosket  of  Hipsley,  in  the  kingdom  of  Great  Britain. 
With  incorrigible  naivete  would  he  meander  amid  his  woes, 
this  victim  of  fate,  who  yet  appeared  to  take  a  maudlin 
pleasure  in  his  lot. 

Wherever  sportsmen  met  his  name  was  a  household 
word.  On  the  racecourse  and  at  the  court-side  in  personal 
popularity  he  stood  next  to  the  Heir  Apparent.  Of  every 
form  of  manly  exercise  he  was  the  patron  and  high  priest. 
No  stony  "  ped  "  or  drunken  "  pug  "  ever  sought  his  aid 
in  vain.  He  met  the  acute  pecuniary  need  of  many  a 
fallen  angel  and  light  of  other  days.  Himself  no  an- 
chorite, he  dispensed  largesse  among  all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  men.  He  never  asked  who  or  what  they  were, 
but  accepted  all  men  as  they  represented  themselves  to 
him.  The  mere  existence  of  such  a  one  was  an  evil  in  a 
decently  conducted  state.  He  was  an  offence  to  morals 
and  political  economy;  a  fosterer  of  the  idle,  the  worth- 
less, and  the  corrupt;  a  patron  of  all  forms  of  vaga- 
bondage on  which  the  sun  saw  fit  to  shine. 

Having  delivered  a  short  excursus  on  his  own  hard 
case,  a  permanent  injustice  that  called  for  ventilation  every 
day,  he  returned  to  that  special  tyranny  under  which  his 
nieces  were  suffering.  It  called  loudly  for  redress. 
When  he  took  an  idea  into  his  head  he  could  be  very 
tenacious ;  and  again,  having  no  family  of  his  own,  Broke 
himself  hardly  cherished  the  "  little  fillies  "  more  tenderly 
than  he. 

"  Jane,"  he  said,  with  a  very  knowledgeable  air,  "  I 
suppose  you  know  that  Wimbledon  is  likely  to  be  home, 
and  he  may  be  comin*  over  to-day  from  Hazelby  ?  " 

"  Ah,  our  poor  Harry,"  said  Mrs.  Broke  in  a  motherly 


22  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

voice.  "  That's  rather  surprising.  He  is  so  seldom  any- 
where since  he  lost  poor  dear  Mary.  Besides,  I  thought 
he  was  at  Davos." 

Lord  Bosket  thought  so  too,  but,  like  Brer  Rabbit,  "  he 
lay  low  and  said  nuffin'/'  for  it  was  plain  to  see  by  a  new 
animation  in  the  manner  of  his  sister  that  the  case  was 
altered.  The  Duke  of  Wimbledon's  public  appearances 
had  been  so  rare  of  late  that  for  one  in  the  position  of 
having  six  penniless  girls  to  settle  in  life  it  was  almost  an 
affront  to  Providence  to  ignore  them.  Therefore  in  some- 
thing under  three  minutes  the  inexorable  lady  had  made  a 
concession — a  particularly  graceful  one  to  be  sure.  After 
all,  it  was  a  fine  morning  for  hunting;  the  girls  must  be 
encouraged  to  preserve  their  sovereign  health;  Hegel's 
Lectures  on  the  Philosophy  of  Religion  could  wait  until 
they  returned.     But  they  must  promise  to  be  home  early. 

"  Yes,  mother,"  said  Joan. 

There  was  a  fine  spirit  in  her  eager  face  as  she  rose 
from  the  table. 

"  Delia,"  she  said,  "  please  go  and  tell  Simkin  to  have 
Persephone,  Pat,  and  the  Colonel  ready  as  soon  as  he  can." 

"  Come  here,  little  gal,"  said  Lord  Bosket,  grabbing  Delia 
as  she  was  hastening  to  obey  orders.  "  Give  your  Uncle 
Charles  a  kiss.  Nice,  shy  little  filly,  is  it?  I  told  'em  to 
put  saddle  on  your  new  gee,  Twopence  out  o*  Three- 
pence. Pretty  bit  o'  stuff.  Have  a  look  at  him  when  you 
go  down,  and  see  if  he's  all  right.  You  people  are  so  al- 
mighty particular,  that  you  hardly  fancy  anything  under  a 
National  winner." 

*'  Dear  Uncle  Charles ! "  cried  the  other  five,  circling 
about  him  on  their  way  to  the  door.  Next  to  their  father 
and  their  brother  he  ranked  as  their  good  comrade.  It 
delighted  them  to  pay  the  toll  he  exacted  of  one  and  all. 

By  what  mysterious  means  their  mother's  iron  resolve 
had  been  softened  so  suddenly  they  did  not  know ;  nor  did 
they  try  to  learn.  It  was  enough  that  they  were  going  out 
hunting  after  all;  and  that  their  Uncle  Charles,  notwith- 
standing that  he  swore  so,  and  was  always  calling  Porson 
to  replenish  the  whisky  jar,  and  that  he  had  the  funniest 


UNCLE  CHARLES  23 

way  of  talking  that  ever  was  heard,  was  just  about  the 
dearest  and  kindest  man  and  uncle  in  the  world.  Of 
course,  their  father  was  excluded  from  this  generalization. 
The  deities  are  very  properly  barred  in  a  comparison  of 
mortals. 

*'  Those  are  what  I  call  gals,"  said  their  uncle  as  soon  as 
they  had  gone ;  "  keen  as  the  wind  and  fresh  as  the  day ! 
Jane,  if  you  go  spoilin'  those  nice  little  fillies  by  makin' 
'em  clever,  you'll  be  sorry.  You've  got  to  marry  'em, 
remember." 

A  demure  smile  was  his  recompense  for  this  sage  advice. 
Presently  he  lowered  his  voice  in  a  confidential  manner. , 

"  Talkin'  of  marriage,"  he  said,  *'  I  heard  the  other  day 
that  things  had  been  fixed  up  between  Billy  and  that 
Wayling  gal.  You  had  better  give  me  the  office,  because 
I've  got  a  pony  on  it." 

"  I  think,  Charles,  the  announcement  is  at  least  a  little 
premature." 

Mrs.  Broke's  smile  was  as  placid  as  her  eyes,  but  she 
had  brought  to  perfection  the  art  of  affirmation  by  denial. 
Her  brother  laughed. 

**  I've  lost  my  pony  all  rijBfht.  Jane,  you  are  fly.  So 
you've  hooked  the  heiress.  It's  what  you've  been  wantin' 
this  manv  a  day.  How  you've  kept  body  and  soul  to- 
gether all  these  years  I'm  damned  if  I  know,  as  I  said  to 
Salmon  the  other  night.  Hooked  the  heiress,  have  you? 
You've  missed  your  vocation,  my  gal.  If  you  had  taken 
those  brains  on  the  Turf,  you  would  have  made  a  bit. 
Suppose  I  had  better  congratulate  you ;  you  too,  old  son." 

Husband  and  wife  laughed  without  resentment.  They 
were  used  to  a  frankness  for  which  their  relation  was 
famed  from  one  end  of  England  to  the  other.  Besides, 
they  could  afford  to  be  good-humoured.  A  much-coveted 
prize  had  recently  come  within  the  grasp  of  a  bitterly  im- 
poverished family. 

Lord  Bosket  grew  pensive;  indeed,  the  nature  of  the 
subject  threatened  a  further  recital  of  his  domestic  sor- 
rows. Happily  his  nieces  returned  in  time  to  prevent  it. 
They  were  equipped  with  habits  which  seemed  to  date 


24  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

from  the  year  one,  and  with  bowler  hats  battered  into  all 
shapes  save  that  of  the  original,  and  dating  no  doubt  from 
the  same  period.  Fashion,  however,  did  not  count  in  their 
case.  From  head  to  heel  they  had  the  indefinable  look  of 
the  "  workman."  They  might  well  appeal  to  the  inveterate 
sportsman  who  furnished  many  a  lofty  description  of 
them  to  the  world  at  large.  As  well  as  being  bred  to  the 
saddle  they  had  been  bred  to  the  fields.  They  were  as 
natural  as  any  creatures  there  to  be  found. 

Uncle  Charles  took  them  round  to  the  yard  to  expound 
the  points  of  Delia's  horse,  *'  Twopence  out  of  Three- 
pence " ;  also  those  of  a  new  purchase  of  his  own,  "  Apollo 
by  Apollinaris,"  which  he  proceeded  to  do  with  a  child- 
like gravity  that  endeared  him  more  than  ever  to  his  audi- 
ence. They  then  bore  off  their  Uncle  Charles  to  see  the 
badger,  regaling  him  by  the  way  with  another  stirring 
account  of  its  capture.  Afterwards  were  submitted  to 
his  inspection  a  ferret,  a  stoat,  a  fox,  a  weasel,  a  mon- 
goose, and  innumerable  dogs,  doves,  and  horses,  not  to 
mention  an  old  stable  cat  blind  of  one  eye:  a  formidable 
family  of  pets  which  he  had  to  review  about  three  times 
a  week. 


CHAPTER  III 

ONE  OF  THE  DIE-HARDS 

WHILE  Broke  and  his  attendant  Dianas  are  negoti- 
ating hedges  and  ditches  in  the  February  thaw, 
it  may  be  well  to  look  a  little  closer  at  his  material  state. 
In  person  fine  and  lusty,  he  was  the  embodiment  of  feudal- 
ism, as  was  to  be  expected  of  one  whose  passion  for  the 
land  had  congealed  the  temper  of  his  mind  into  the 
clogging  thickness  of  his  native  loam.  Had  you  dug  over 
his  mind  with  a  spade,  nothing  would  have  been  turned  up 
in  it  save  the  immemorial  lust  of  possession,  the  pride  of 
race,  the  abasement  of  spirit  before  the  soil,  which  even 
at  this  day  rendered  him  as  foremost  an  Englishman  as 
any,  although  a  little  paradoxically,  considering  how  our 
enlightenment  has  been  vaunted  in  the  eyes  of  others,  he 
still  remained  the  essential  type  of  the  Briton  of  the  days 
of  Froissart  and  Chaucer. 

To  reconcile  such  a  one  to  his  day  and  generation  was 
impossible.  Nothing;  not  his  wife,  not  his  friends,  not 
his  circumstances,  not  experience  itself,  conspire  as  they 
might,  could  reconcile  him  to  the  heresy  that  at  the  dawn 
of  the  twentieth  century  of  the  Christian  era,  pounds, 
shillings  and  pence  had  superseded  more  picturesque  con- 
siderations in  point  of  virtue.  He  could  not  bring  himself 
to  believe  that  a  picturesque  lineage  was  of  less  account 
than  a  knowledge  of  arithmetic.  To  him  the  idea  was  as 
fantastic  as  it  would  have  been  to  the  mind  of  his  fathers, 
that  a  tradesman  could  pass  for  a  gentleman.  It  hurt  him 
to  think  that  a  man's  income  was  a  touchstone  of  merit. 
Why  be  at  the  trouble  to  trace  your  lineage  from  a  Nor- 
man robber  or  a  Saxon  one  if  for  a  small  monetary  con- 
sideration anybody  could  derive  theirs  from  Charlemagne, 

25 


26  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

or  good  King  Arthur,  or  a  husbandman  and  landowner 
of  the  name  of  Adam?  Why  have  a  handle  to  your  name 
if  it  was  open  to  all  the  world  to  buy  its  nobility  as  it 
bought  its  mutton,  and  every  pedlar  pushed  a  seat  in  the 
House  of  Lords  before  him  on  his  barrow?  In  vain  was 
his  voice  uplifted  with  the  ducal  bard : 

Let  wealth  and  commerce,  laws  and  learning  die, 
But  leave  us  still  our  old  nobility. 

Alas!  that  lyrical  cry  wrought  no  consolation  in  his  tor- 
mented spirit. 

On  the  other  hand,  to  do  him  no  injustice.  Brokers  cout 
iception  of  his  own  figure  in  the  world  was  no  unworthy 
one.  His  acres,  his  status,  his  hereditary  merit  were  very 
precious  in  his  sight.  He  safeguarded  them  as  jealously 
as  his  foxes,  his  blood-stock,  his  turnips,  and  his  daugh- 
ters. Like  the  ancestral  ivy  they  gave  colour  to  an  edifice 
otherwise  substantially  plain,  yet  unlike  it  they  were  pos- 
sessions which  his  creditors  had  not  the  power  to  touch. 

Pride,  says  the  moralist,  is  a  weed  that  flourishes  in  a 
barren  soil;  certainly  it  waxed  upon  Broke's  poverty.  A 
very  stalwart  of  a  man,  torpid  with  beef  and  ale,  his  con- 
stitutional misfortunes  were  a  little  overwhelming.  Per- 
haps the  first  of  these  was  the  hour  the  gods  had  chosen 
to  impose  his  personality  upon  a  slightly  amused,  a  slightly 
irreverent  world.  As  a  feudal  baron  he  would  have  been 
a  complete  success,  but  in  his  capacity  of  plain  country 
squire  in  the  last  days  of  Victoria,  with  the  habits  of  his 
forebears  at  the  mercy  of  a  pecuniary  need  they  had  not' 
been  schooled  to  endure,  the  figure  that  he  cut  was  hardly 
so  heroic  as  his  bearing.  You  do  not  expect  a  king  to 
have  holes  in  his  coat.  Poor  Broke  minus  his  timber  and 
with  heavy  mortgages  on  his  property  was  so  thinly  clad 
that  he  could  be  seen  to  shiver  every  time  the  wind  blew. 

Those  of  his  neighbours  who  challenged  his  pretensions 
with  a  few  of  their  own,  acquired  in  several  instances  with 
the  painful  and  recent  suddenness  of  their  millions,  were 
given  to  watch  the  spectacle  with  shrewd  enjoyment.  The 
nearest  of  these,  the  wealthiest,  and  incomparably  the  most 


ONE  OF  THE  DIE-HARDS  27 

audacious,  was  a  certain  Lord  Salmon,  the  latest  thing  in 
peers,  who  had  the  knack  of  expressing  his  views  with 
point  and  freedom.  "  Edmund  Broke  is  one  of  the  Die- 
hards — perfect  father  and  husband,  domestic  laurel  crowns 
his  visionary  brow,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing.  But  there 
are  no  joints  in  his  backbone.  He  can't  bend.  He'll  be 
worth  watching  when  the  crash  comes." 

Broke's  judgment  on  the  adventurous  Salmon  contained 
more  clinching  expressions.  A  man  who  in  his  own  words 
''  began  life  with  a  barrel-organ  and  three  white  mice," 
who  dared  to  put  a  price  on  Covenden  itself,  at  ten  per 
cent  above  its  value  in  the  market,  "  because  when  a  place 
suits  my  fancy,  money's  no  obstacle,"  was  a  person  too 
irresponsible  to  be  worthy  of  censure.  Rather  he  should 
be  laughed  at  temperately.  But  Lord  Salmon  was  too 
successful  to  be  laughed  at.  Broke,  therefore,  had  re- 
course to  the  weapons  of  the  weaker  party.  He  damned 
his  eyes. 

Salmon  replied  by  an  affront  to  civilization.  He  built  a 
mansion  in  the  Victorian  style.  The  lord  of  the  manor 
could  no  longer  range  his  demesne  oblivious  to  the  House 
of  Salmon.  For  the  seat  of  that  august  family  had  been 
raised  on  an  adjacent  hill,  part  of  which  was  appropriated 
turbary.  The  place  was  a  paradise  of  sanitation.  It  was 
equipped  with  every  modem  inconvenience,  at  once  amaz- 
ing and  American,  lighted  with  electricity  and  heated  by 
steam,  a  really  high  achievement  in  discomfort,  blushing 
in  red  brick.  Lord  Salmon,  however,  retained  his  self- 
possession  through  all  this  relentless  grandeur.  It  hardly 
excited  him  at  all.  His  candour  was  as  superb  as  his 
insouciance.  He  still  remained  the  humorist  he  had  al- 
ways been.  He  acknowledged  as  freely  that  Toplands 
owed  its  being  to  the  Semitic  genius  of  Saul  first  Baron 
Salmon  as  that  the  patent  of  nobility  of  Saul  first  Baron 
Salmon  aforesaid  was  the  interest  on  the  sum  of  fifty 
thousand  pounds  invested  discreetly  in  the  funds  of  the 
Party  that  most  required  it.  In  apologizing  for  the  un- 
avoidable absence  of  his  ancestors  he  took  a  simple-minded 
pleasure.     "  One  can't  have  everything,  you  know,"  he 


28  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

would  say  with  quiet  resignation.  "  Life  has  not  been 
ungenerous  on  the  whole.  We  keep  a  yacht  at  Cowes  and 
a  few  horses  in  training.  We  dine  at  the  Carlton  and 
hunt  with  the  Quorn.  We  have  a  moor  in  Scotland  and 
a  river  in  Norway.  We  don't  lack  for  friends ;  and  Lady 
Salmon  says  she  has  quite  a  horror  of  paste.  As  for  my 
ancestors,  I  am  a  man  with  a  Tribe." 

Salmon  was  the  antithesis  of  his  neighbour.  He  was 
beginning;  Broke  was  ceasing  to  be.  He  had  ideas,  in- 
telligence, boundless  energy;  Broke  was  mercifully  deliv- 
ered from  inconveniences  of  this  nature.  Broke's  was 
the  sturdy  limitation  of  mind,  the  admirable  bovine  ab- 
sence of  temperament  of  the  true  John  Bull.  The  one 
embittered  the  life  of  his  headkeeper;  the  other  was  a 
country  gentleman.  The  one  endowed  hospitals  and  homes 
for  working  men;  the  other  contracted  debts  he  had  not 
the  wherewithal  to  discharge.  Salmon  was  a  promoter 
of  public  companies,  cool  and  audacious,  a  bland  and  splen- 
did personage;  whilst  Broke  was  uncompromising  in  his 
gait,  matchless  in  dignity,  azure  of  blood,  and  very  thick, 
consequently  sluggish ;  a  caricature  of  a  type,  but  not  with- 
out some  of  the  saving  graces  of  his  order. 

It  was  an  open  secret  in  the  county  that  Broke  was  on 
his  last  legs.  Two  and  two  had  only  to  be  put  together. 
The  depreciation  of  land-values  was  a  heavy  factor;  and 
again,  the  aristocratic  instinct  is  not  to  be  gratified  through- 
out a  term  of  centuries  without  sooner  or  later  Thread- 
needle  Street  asking  for  better  security.  If  only  he  live 
long  enough  even  the  feudalist  has  to  submit  to  the  dis- 
covery of  coal  under  the  virgin  soil.  The  Brokes,  a  good 
freebooting  family,  had  been  able  to  live  in  purple  and 
fine  linen  in  the  good  old  days.  They  took  their  own 
where  they  found  it.  But  other  times,  other  ways  of  life. 
Under  Victorian  statutes  the  strong  hand  was  liable  to 
be  interpreted  as  a  felony.  The  strong  brain  had  super- 
seded it.  Persons  of  an  ingenious  turn,  the  Salmons  for 
example,  arranged  their  "  booms "  and  their  ''  slumps," 
"  rigged  "  their  markets,  "  floated  "  their  "  companies," 
knew  how  to  be  a  "  bear  "  and  when  to  be  a  "  bull,"  rented 


ONE  OF  THE  DIE-HARDS  29 

Park  Lane,  had  their  little  places  in  the  country,  a  con- 
venient distance  from  town;  and  were  able  with  their 
wealth  to  menace  and  oust  the  county  families,  or  what 
they  liked  better,  to  force  them  to  compromise. 

The  fusion  of  blood  and  brains  was  the  first  condition. 
The  Brokes  struggled  without  avail.  The  Salmons  held 
the  power  and  did  not  hesitate  to  wield  it.  The  Brokes 
must  perish  or  submit.  The  philosophers  among  the  an- 
cien  regime  clenched  their  teeth  and  inter-married  with 
the  bloated  plutocrat;  the  astute  among  them  compro- 
mised the  matter  by  taking  in  matrimony  the  fair  and  well- 
found  daughters  from  across  the  Atlantic,  on  the  plea 
that  every  American  woman  is  a  queen  in  her  own  right 
— a  doubtful  compliment  to  a  democratic  country  which 
yet  seemed  to  please  it  very  well.  The  Brokes  of  Covenden, 
those  stubborn  Die-Hards,  sought  in  the  meantime  to  pur- 
sue the  even  tenor  of  their  way,  entering  into  alliances 
only  with  those  whom  they  were  leased  to  call  "  the  right 
sort,"  a  term  of  an  admirable  vagueness  suited  to  the  char- 
acter of  their  ideals. 

Mrs.  Broke,  with  her  penniless  and  uninteresting  girls 
to  provide  for,  was  at  the  end  of  her  wits.  She  was  too 
keenly  alive  to  the  exigencies  of  the  age  to  have  scruples 
as  to  what  direction  they  married  in;  but  Brokers  exclu- 
siveness  grew  more  inordinate  as  the  occasion  for  it  grew 
more  obscure. 

In  the  matter  of  her  son,  however,  the  dauntless  lady 
had  already  achieved  a  success,  in  spite  of  the  restrictions 
under  which  she  laboured.  The  wealthy  and  beautiful 
Miss  Wayling  of  Calow,  the  last  of  a  line  celebrated  in 
song  and  story,  mistress  of  Calow  Court,  and  Crag's  Foot 
Priory,  Long  Shafton  Hall,  and  still  better,  one-fifth  of 
a  northern  coal  county,  was  a  young  woman  of  fabulous 
eligibility.  She  was  indeed  a  match;  and  if  report  was 
true,  her  heart  was  thrown  into  the  scale  with  her  other 
attractions.  A  young  woman  of  character,  report  said 
also.     Was  ever  such  luck  as  this  young  man's? 

When  her  family  had  at  last  gone  to  hunt  the  fox,  Mrs. 
Broke  was  able  to  give  her  attention  to  the  remainder  of 


30  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

the  morning's  post.  Of  three  letters  that  claimed  her 
notice  one  was  in  the  handwriting  of  her  son,  whilst  the 
two  others,  directed  to  Edmund  Broke,  Esq.,  were  of  a 
business  character  and  came  therefore  within  his  wife's 
cognizance. 

Her  son's  letter,  written  in  the  style  so  characteristic  of 
its  writer,  was  to  inform  his  mother  that  a  brother  officer, 
one  Dicky  Sykes,  having  had  the  misfortune  **  to  take  a 
toss  and  smash  his  shoulder  to  blazes,"  was  compelled  to 
give  up  polo  for  a  time.  He  was  selling  his  ponies  in  con- 
sequence, and  was  prepared,  as  an  act  of  friendship,  to 
part  with  a  couple,  ''  the  pick  of  the  basket,"  for  a  "  mon- 
key," in  other  words  five  hundred  pounds  "  on  the  nail." 
He,  the  writer,  was  almost  ashamed  to  take  them ;  it  was 
almost  like  getting  them  for  nothing;  but  in  spite  of  the 
modesty  of  this  sum  his  allowance,  as  he  had  pointed  out 
so  often  to  "  his  dear  old  mummy,"  could  only  cope  with 
difficulty  with  the  bare  necessities  of  life,  and  as  a  couple 
of  polo  ponies,  however  essential  to  man's  well-being, 
hardly  came  within  this  category,  he  hoped  "  his  good  old 
mummy  "  would  let  him  have  a  cheque  by  return.  In  a 
postscript  not  very  legible  occurred  these  words :  "  I 
don't  want  you  to  get  fussing  about  Maud  and  me.  She 
is  above  my  paper." 

As  Mrs.  Broke  read  this  letter  she  laughed,  also  she 
sighed  a  little.  There  was  a  softness  in  her  eyes  that 
might  have  surprised  her  daughters  very  much  had  they 
been  able  to  see  it. 

The  other  letters  were  a  little  more  prosaic.  The  first 
was  as  follows: 

"  Edmund  Broke,  Esq., — Dear  Sir,  I  beg  again  to  call 
your  attention  to  the  fact  that  your  account  is  overdrawn 
considerably  in  excess  of  the  security  we  hold.  I  am 
instructed  by  my  Directors  to  inform  you  that  it  is  im- 
possible to  permit  this  deficit  to  be  increased.  I  am  fur- 
ther instructed  respectfully  to  urge  you  to  reduce  it  with- 
out delay.  The  undersigned  would  be  glad  to  arrange  a 
personal  interview  at  your  early  convenience.     I  am.  Dear 


ONE  OF  THE  DIE-HARDS  31 

Sir,  yours  very  faithfully,  per  pro  Marr's  Banking  Com- 
pany Ltd.,  Jas.  B.  Chayney." 

The  second  was  a  little  more  to  the  point: 

"  Edmund  Broke,  Esq., — Sir,  We  were  much  surprised 
to  have  this  morning  the  enclosed  cheque  on  Marr's  Bank- 
ing Company  Ltd.  returned  to  us  endorsed  R.D.  Unless 
we  receive  a  remittance  for  the  full  amount  (£103  i6s.  5d.) 
per  return  of  post  we  shall  be  compelled  to  take  steps  for 
its  immediate  recovery.  We  are.  Sir,  your  obedient  serv- 
ants, Denise  et  Cie." 

Mrs.  Broke  was  neither  surprised  nor  embarrassed  by 
such  concrete  examples  of  that  which  continually  threat- 
ened them.  She  knew  they  were  on  the  brink  of  ruin. 
For  many  a  weary  year  had  she  been  paring  cheese  to  the 
last  desperate  farthing,  and  here  at  the  end  of  the  period 
the  spectre  loomed  ever  larger. 

When  Broke  returned  dog-tired  late  in  the  afternoon, 
she  had  a  talk  with  him  in  the  library,  as  soon  as  he  had 
had  time  to  take  a  bath  and  change  his  clothes.  The  let- 
ters were  laid  before  him. 

The  dispirited  man  sank  into  a  chair. 

"  I  don't  know  what  to  do,"  he  said  feebly.  "  I  am  al- 
ways trying  for  another  mortgage,  but  land  goes  for  noth- 
ing now.     Denise  et  Cie  ?     Who  are  they  ?  " 

"  Those  absurd  Presentation  dresses.  But  you  would 
insist  on  them." 

"  Yes,  yes,"  said  Broke  gently.  "  But  how  do  people 
live  on  nothing?  " 

"  We  have  been  doing  it,  Edmund,  for  nearly  thirty 
years.  We  shall  be  obliged  to  let  No.  3  this  season,  or 
if  we  can  find  somebody  to  take  it,  I  think  it  would  be 
better  to  do  things  thoroughly  and  sell  the  lease." 

"  I  was  afraid  of  that." 

*'  I  am  sure  not  more  than  I.  It  is  so  necessary  for  the 
girls." 

"  Poor  beggars ! "  said  their  father,  with  an  odd  tender- 
ness. "  Not  much  of  a  show  for  them.  And  now  they 
will  not  be  able  to  have  their  bit  of  a  season." 


2,2  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  I  think  Emma  may  have  Delia  at  Grosvenor  Street 
for  May.  They  will  all  be  out  then.  She  may  have  one 
of  the  others  also.     Emma  has  a  good  heart." 

"  But  even  if  we  give  up  No.  3  I  am  afraid  it  will  not 
help  very  much.  However,  I  will  see  Breffit  to-morrow. 
And  by  the  bye,  the  sooner  Billy  is  married  the  better." 

"  I  quite  agree  with  you." 

"  He  is  not  like  the  girls.  I  have  not  too  much  confi- 
dence in  that  fellow.  We  might  find  him  with  his  heels 
over  the  traces  some  fine  morning.  He  is  careless  and 
extravagant." 

Mrs.  Broke  demurred  with  a  little  sigh.  Maternal  ten- 
derness had  not  the  heart  to  subscribe  to  such  a  strong 
opinion. 

"  Obstinate,  headstrong ;  you  have  to  watch  that  sort. 
It  would  be  nice  for  us  if  he  came  the  same  sort  of  crop- 
per that  Charles  did.     I  think  you  remember  Charles  ?  " 

"  Well,  ye-es,"  said  the  sister  of  Charles,  with  a  slightly 
forced  laugh. 

The  allusion  was  to  the  Right  Honourable  Charles 
Chevenix,  13th  Baron  in  the  kingdom  of  Great  Britain, 
who  at  the  present  tender  age  of  his  nephew  William  had 
regaled  his  friends  and  shocked  the  democracy  of  his 
country  by  plighting  his  troth  with  that  of  Miss  Maisie 
Malone,  a  star  of  the  Light  Comedy  Theatre.  How  Mr. 
Charles— it  was  in  the  time  of  his  father,  the  late  peer — 
started  on  a  tour  of  the  globe  on  the  very  morning  that  the 
noble  lord  arrived  at  the  lady's  residence  in  St.  John's 
Wood  attended  by  his  lawyer  and  a  blank  cheque,  a  tend- 
ency to  apoplexy,  and  a  natural  flow  of  English  of  great 
pith  and  fluency,  and  how  the  sum  of  ten  thousand  pounds 
became  the  amount  of  the  indemnity,  was  a  page  of  the 
family  history  to  which  Mrs.  Broke  was  still  unable  to 
turn  without  a  shudder,  although  it  had  been  written  years 
and  years  ago. 

"  I  would  lose  no  time  in  getting  him  fixed  up,"  said 
Broke.  "  We  shall  not  be  safe  with  that  fellow  until 
there  is  a  halter  on  him." 

Mrs.  Broke  gave  him  the  young  man's  letter. 


ONE  OF  THE  DIE-HARDS  33 

"  I  fancy  he  won't  get  his  ponies,"  he  said,  and  upon 
reaching  the  postscript  added,  "  Why,  the  fellow's  a  fool. 
He  don't  know  what's  good  for  him.  I  can't  understand 
a  chap  in  his  senses  shying  at  a  girl  like  Maud.  Her 
mother  was  a  Fitzurse ;  the  Waylings  were  on  the  roll  of 
the  Visiting  Justices;  she's  a  catch  for  anybody.  The 
fellow's  a  fool." 

"  Yes,  but  a  rather  pleasant  fool." 

"  A  reckless  fool.  A  fool  who  don't  care.  Had  you 
knocked  the  nonsense  out  of  him  regularly  as  you  have 
done  with  the  girls,  we  should  not  have  him  giving  him- 
self airs  in  this  way." 

His  son's  letter  had  touched  the  autocrat. 

"  I  think,  my  dear,  you  overstate  the  case.  I  am  sure 
neither  Billy  nor  the  girls  would  think  of  acting  contrary 
to  their  own  interests." 

"  Well,  waste  no  time.  I've  not  much  confidence  in 
the  fellow." 

With  this  final  expression  of  his  wisdom  Broke  dis- 
solved the  conference. 

"If  the  girls  have  come  down,"  said  his  wife,  **  will  you 
please  send  them  here.  And,  please,  tell  them  to  bring 
their  German  dictionaries." 

"  Poor  beggars ! "  said  their  father  as  he  went  out  of 
the  room. 

He  had  a  deep-seated  pity  for  his  girls.  He  felt  the 
sharpest  pinch  of  his  circumstances  when  he  reflected  that 
they  had  to  suflfer  privations  to  which,  could  his  own  feel- 
ings have  been  consulted,  he  would  have  been  the  last 
man  in  the  world  to  condemn  them.  Then  their  mother 
ruled  them  with  a  rod  of  iron.  It  was  doubtless  for  their 
good ;  but  all  the  same  he  did  think  she  was  a  bit  hard  on 
them  sometimes. 

The  girls  filed  into  the  library  with  deep  apprehension. 
In  the  field  fear  had  hardly  a  meaning;  but  this  room 
flanked  with  shelf  upon  shelf  of  old  grim  tomes  over 
which  the  stern  spirit  of  their  mother  presided,  was  the 
abode  of  terror.  However,  this  afternoon  there  was  a 
respite  to  their  real  sufferings,  a  somewhat  painful  en- 


34  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

counter  with  the  German  language,  while  their  mother 
read  aloud  that  portion  of  their  brother's  letter  that  she 
felt  concerned  them. 

"  Your  father  says  he  cannot  find  a  penny  more  than 
he  receives  at  present.     Have  you  a  suggestion  ?  " 

Had  Billy  desired  the  moon,  the  female  members  of  his 
family  would  have  endeavoured  humbly  to  purchase  it  for 
him  with  their  pocket  money.  Even  his  mother  could 
relent  where  he  was  concerned.  As  for  his  sisters,  no 
sacrifice  was  too  severe  could  it  gratify  his  lightest  whim. 
He  was  the  lineal  descendant  of  their  father;  the  shining 
qualities  of  that  god  and  hero  among  mankind  had  been 
transmitted  to  his  son,  the  heir  of  his  name  and  fortune, 
and  also  of  his  immortality.  Their  loyalty  was  of  the  un- 
flinching quality  that  generations  of  their  race  had  ren- 
dered to  the  king.  Billy  could  do  no  wrong.  To  them 
he  was  absolutely  perfect:  the  kindest,  bravest,  cleverest 
brother  in  the  world. 

"  We  could  sell  some  of  the  hunters,"  said  Joan.  "  Two 
or  three  of  the  thoroughbreds,  Pat,  Whitenose,  and  The 
Doctor  might  be  worth  five  hundred  pounds." 

She  spoke  without  hesitation.  Her  sisters  regarded 
her  with  admiration.  She  was  of  the  uncompromising 
type  which  cheerfully  forfeits  its  right  hand  should  the 
occasion  ever  arise.  The  others  hugely  admired  this  fibre 
in  her,  and  were  prepared  to  follow  her  lead  anywhere, 
since  they  had  all  been  cast  in  the  same  heroic  mould. 

If  to  prove  the  rule  an  exception  is  insisted  on,  it  must 
be  the  youngest,  Delia.  To  be  sure,  she  was  but  a  child. 
But  again  and  again  the  other  five,  whose  mature  years 
ranged  from  eighteen  to  two-and-twenty,  had  been  forced 
to  confess  in  their  hearts,  that  they  had  no  confidence  in 
Delia.  They  were  afraid  she  was  not  quite  one  of  them. 
They  had  to  be  very  strict  with  her.  There  was  some- 
thing delicate,  impressionable,  something  that  you  might 
even  call  poetic  and  rather  foolish  about  her.  She  had 
longer  eyelashes  than  any  of  them,  and  they  curled  up  at 
the  ends  in  the  oddest  manner.  Her  eyes,  too,  were  bluer 
than  anybody's,  bluer  even  than  Joan's,  with  a  queer  filmy 


ONE  OF  THE  DIE-HARDS  35 

sort  of  thing  hovering  about  them,  that  gave  them  a  look 
of  mystery.  When  a  thing  like  that  hovers  about  your 
eyes  it  is  hard  to  tell  what  you  will  be  at  next.  She  had 
been  convicted  of  several  misdemeanours  already,  al- 
though she  was  such  a  baby  in  point  of  years.  It  was 
still  fresh  in  their  minds  how  that  morning  she  had  con- 
trived to  disgrace  herself  on  her  birthday.  Nor  could 
you  ascribe  such  a  faux  pas  wholly  to  her  age.  At  no 
period  of  life  could  Joan,  Philippa,  Harriet,  Jane,  or  Mar- 
garet "  have  made  such  a  perfect  silly  of  herself." 

Once  they  had  found  her  in  tears  over  a  fairy  tale ;  and 
on  many  occasions  she  had  shown  a  tendency  to  read  books 
of  her  own  accord.  Once  she  had  missed  her  tea  because 
she  was  reading  in  the  library.  What  sort  of  book  it  was 
that  she  read  they  did  not  know,  but  that  it  exercised  a 
pernicious  influence  upon  her  mind  there  could  be  no 
doubt.  Solecisms  she  had  committed  already;  but  she 
would  have  committed  others,  they  were  sure,  and  graver 
ones  had  they  not  sat  on  her  constantly  and  snubbed  her 
dutifully  from  her  earliest  youth.  For  try  as  she  might 
to  conceal  the  fact  they  knew  that  she  kept  ideas  of  her 
own.  Doves  and  pigeons  and  the  thousand  and  one  de- 
lectable things  the  law  allowed  them  to  keep  did  not  suffice 
for  her.  Indeed  the  severest  thing  that  lenient  man  their 
father  had  said  of  any  one  of  them  had  been  said  to  Delia. 
He  said  that  had  she  been  a  boy  she  might  have  grown  up 
to  be  a  Radical. 


CHAPTER  IV 

LORD   CHESTERFIELD   TO    HIS   SON 

THE  next  morning  Broke  rode  over  to  Cuttisham  to 
see  his  agent.  He  was  in  a  despondent  mood.  As 
he  drove  through  the  February  mist,  and  the  rain  trickled 
into  his  skin,  and  his  horse  plunged  up  to  the  fetlocks  in 
mire  that  had  borne  his  name  for  as  long  a  period  as  his- 
tory was  able  to  keep  a  record,  his  thoughts  were  bitter. 
Look  which  way  he  might  there  was  no  light  to  soften  the 
gloom  of  his  affairs.  Like  the  sky  itself,  their  sombre- 
ness  was  all-pervading.  His  lands  were  rotting  under 
his  feet;  his  house  was  tumbling  about  his  ears.  Gates 
were  unhinged,  hedges  broken,  farms  tenantless,  fields 
lying  sterile  for  lack  of  the  things  he  could  not  afford  to 
buy.     All  was  symbolical  of  the  decay  of  him  and  his. 

Never  did  a  man  feel  more  powerless  in  the  grip  of  cir- 
cumstance. He  was  not  cast  in  the  mould  that  can  grap- 
ple with  two  strong  hands  at  the  throat  of  destiny.  He 
had  been  born  with  a  silver  spoon  in  his  mouth;  if  he 
were  hungry,  he  opened  his  lips,  and  lo !  he  was  fed.  He 
was  accustomed  to  discharge  all  his  obligations  to  the 
outside  world  by  the  simple  and  excellent  expedient  of  a 
cheque  on  his  bankers.  His  forebears  had  been  accus- 
tomed to  doing  it  before  him,  ever  since  banks  came  into 
use.  It  was  their  way,  therefore  it  was  his ;  it  was  unrea- 
sonable to  ask  him  to  seek  another  when  one  which  had 
the  sanction  of  long  use  was  altogether  to  be  commended. 

Look  at  the  matter  as  he  would,  he  did  not  see  what  he 
could  do  to  retrieve  his  position.  If  he  farmed  his  own 
land  he  lost  his  money;  and  to  induce  others  to  farm  it 
for  him  was  not  easy  in  the  present  state  of  agriculture. 
But  a  man  must  live,  and  a  Broke  must  live  spaciously. 

36 


LORD  CHESTERFIELD  TO  HIS  SON         37 

In  this  age  of  the  plutocrat  and  the  parvenue  the  world 
looked  to  such  a  one  to  keep  a  light  burning. 

His  mood  was  no  lighter  when  at  last  he  came  into 
Cuttisham,  the  county  town  of  the  shire.  Two  out  of  three 
of  the  passers-by  touched  their  hats  to  him,  and  trades- 
men saluted  him  at  their  doors,  but  this  deference  brought 
no  balm  to  his  spirit.  If  anything  it  made  him  the  more 
depressed.  He  rode  solemnly  through  the  town,  until  he 
found  himself  in  a  thoroughfare  a  little  narrower,  a  little 
cleaner,  and  a  little  more  somnolent  than  those  he  had 
traversed  already.  It  bore  the  name  of  High  Street ;  and 
was  the  locale  of  the  post  office  and  the  bank ;  of  the  law- 
yer and  the  doctor;  of  the  club  and  of  various  charitable 
societies;  and  above  all  it  contained  the  office  and  abode 
of  that  remarkable  man  Mr.  Joseph  Breffit. 

As  the  sun  is  to  the  solar  system,  in  that  relation  did  Mr. 
Breffit  stand  to  the  social  and  economic  life  of  his  native 
place.  He  was  the  luminary  around  which  all  things  re- 
volved; the  fixed  star  in  the  local  firmament,  without 
whose  sanction  it  was  hardly  possible  for  the  world  to  be 
carried  on.  There  was  nothing  too  great  or  too  trivial  to 
be  outside  the  sphere  of  Mr.  Breffit's  interest.  If  a  sub- 
scription was  opened  for  a  charitable  object,  his  was  the 
first  name  upon  the  list.  If  the  Lord-Lieutenant  of  the 
county  gave  five  pounds,  Mr.  Breffit  gave  ten ;  if  the  Lord- 
Lieutenant  gave  fifty  pounds  Mr.  Breffit  gave  a  hundred. 
If  a  drunkard  was  sent  to  prison  for  a  week  Mr.  Breffit 
was  on  the  bench  to  send  him  there.  Afterwards,  if  he 
expressed  a  wish  to  reform,  Mr.  Breffit  got  him  admitted 
into  a  home  for  inebriates.  If  subsequently  he  grew  more 
licentious  in  his  habits,  Mr.  Breffit  distrained  upon  his 
goods  for  rent ;  if  less  licentious,  Mr.  Breffit  took  him  into 
his  employ.  If  he  died,  Mr.  Breffit  furnished  the  money 
for  his  burial  out  of  the  insurance  policy  he  had  taken  out 
in  the  company  with  which  Mr.  Breffit  was  associated. 
If  he  absconded,  Mr.  Breffit  signed  the  order  for  the  com- 
mittal of  his  wife  and  family  to  the  workhouse. 

When  a  distinguished  person  came  to  Cuttisham  it  was 
as  the  guest  of  Mr.  Breffit.     If  a  lecture  was  given  in  the 


38  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

town  hall  Mr.  Breffit  occupied  the  chair,  and  it  was  Mr. 
Breffit  who  introduced  the  lecturer  to  the  audience  in  a 
few  homely  but  well-chosen  words.  During  those  sea- 
sons when  the  local  members  were  constrained  to  loose 
the  arrows  of  their  oratory,  Mr.  Breffit  sat  at  their  right 
hand  on  the  platform,  taking  precedence  even  of  the 
Mayor  and  the  county  magnates.  It  was  his  inalienable 
privilege  to  say  "  Hear,  Hear  "  in  the  forensic  pauses  of 
these  masters  of  political  ineptitude  three  times  as  often 
and  twice  as  loudly  as  anybody  else. 

Cuttisham  was  proud  of  Mr.  Breffit,  and  Mr.  Breffit 
was  proud  of  Cuttisham.  He  knew  everybody,  and  he 
knew  everything;  pre-eminently  he  knew  how  many  beans 
made  five.  He  was  a  land  agent  primarily ;  he  was  also  a 
lawyer,  an  insurance  agent,  a  dealer  in  stocks  and  shares, 
a  breeder  of  cattle  and  horses,  a  banker,  a  brewer,  a 
landed  proprietor.  He  was  a  philanthropist  and  a  pub- 
licist, a  justice  of  the  peace,  a  guardian  of  the  poor,  a 
churchwarden,  a  county  councillor,  a  colonel  in  the  vol- 
unteers. In  all  weathers,  in  all  seasons,  a  tall  silk  hat,  a 
white  waistcoat,  and  a  pair  of  highly  polished  brown  boots, 
were  three  articles  indispensable  to  his  attire. 

Not  only  did  Mr.  Breffit  know  the  business  of  every- 
body in  Cuttisham  almost  as  well  as  his  own,  but  he  knew 
that  of  the  great  ones  of  the  earth  who  dwelt  in  the  county. 
Further,  he  conducted  it.  Nor  was  it  their  business  alone 
with  which  he  was  acquainted.  He  knew  the  worth  and 
extent  of  their  properties,  the  personnel  and  Christian 
names  of  their  respective  families,  their  balance  at  the 
bank  and  their  armorial  bearings.  Also  he  knew  when  the 
first  cuttings  were  planted  of  their  genealogical  trees.  It 
was  his  boast  that  he  was  brought  into  perpetual  contact 
with  the  nobility  and  gentry.  And  as  even  the  most  hard- 
headed  and  successful  men  are  prone  to  undervalue  the 
privileges  they  enjoy  and  unduly  enhance  those  they  do 
not,  so  Mr.  Breffit,  who  had  wealth  and  a  keen  intelli- 
gence, held  these  as  light  in  comparison  with  what  he 
called  "  blue  blood." 

Now  the  one  among  his  clients  to  whom  the  gods  had 


LORD  CHESTERFIELD  TO  HIS  SON         39 

been  most  liberal  in  this  mysterious  quality,  without  a 
doubt,  was  Mr.  Broke.  Persons  there  were  better  en- 
dowed with  mere  things  of  the  world ;  persons  of  a  more 
generous  culture;  persons  of  title;  persons  more  distin- 
guished in  the  public  service;  persons  of  a  wider  intel- 
lectual range;  persons  who  paid  far  more  for  services 
rendered;  but  there  was  not  one  among  them  all  whose 
acquaintance  Mr.  Breffit  valued  so  highly  as  that  of  Broke 
of  Covenden.  He  felt  that  in  reserving  for  Edmund 
Broke,  a  plain  country  squire,  the  first  place  in  his  esteem, 
he  honoured  himself.  It  would  have  been  so  easy  to  re- 
serve this  particular  niche  for  the  master  of  Hazelby,  or 
the  Earl  of  Croxton,  or  one  among  the  humbler  or  more 
recent  creations  who  flourished  in  the  shire.  Mr.  Breffit 
flattered  himself  that  where  one  of  less  perception  would 
have  been  captured  by  mere  externals,  he  was  by  way  of 
being  a  .connoisseur.  Compared  with  the  Brokes,  their 
neighbours  were  only  people  of  yesterday. 

When  the  Squire  of  Covenden  arrived  at  the  plain  brass 
plate  that  kept  the  entrance  to  Mr.  Breffit's  office,  that  gen- 
tleman was  seated  in  his  private  room  in  the  company  of  his 
son.  The  father,  small,  grey,  wiry,  without  a  superfluous 
ounce  of  flesh  upon  his  bones,  had  an  almost  boyish  eager- 
ness of  demeanour  which  sprang  from  a  mercurial  tem- 
perament. It  was  to  the  peculiar  quality  of  this  tempera- 
ment that  he  owed  his  success  in  life.  A  many-sided  man 
of  affairs,  a  man  of  numberless  interests,  it  was  the  fever- 
ish energy  with  which  he  threw  himself  into  them  that 
enabled  him  to  bring  them  to  a  successful  issue.  He  pur- 
sued the  art  of  turning  an  honest  penny  with  the  ardour 
that  belongs  to  genius.  His  was  the  invaluable  secret  of 
producing  blood  from  a  stone. 

The  son  did  not  present  the  pregnant  points  of  the  fa- 
ther. Doubtless  they  were  not  there  to  start  with;  but 
even  if  they  had  been  the  public  school  and  the  University 
had  already  done  much  to  efface  them.  A  clean-limbed, 
well-groomed,  clear-eyed  young  man,  he  had  rather  su- 
percilious good  looks  and  perfect  health. 

Father  and  son  were  engaged  in  an  important  conversa- 


40  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

tion.  The  son  was  at  the  threshold  of  a  career.  Since 
completing  his  third  year  at  Cambridge  in  the  previous 
June  the  young  man  had  spent  a  month  in  the  cricket  field, 
a  fortnight  with  the  grouse,  a  fortnight  with  the  partridge, 
a  fortnight  with  the  pheasant,  and  divers  fortnights  in 
town  doing  the  music-halls  and  the  theatres,  and  in  visit- 
ing his  friends  and  the  friends  of  his  friends.  He  was 
now  about  to  settle  down  under  his  father's  eye.  In  the 
exalted  sphere  into  which  his  polished  manners  and  his 
immaculate  person  were  destined  to  lead  him,  his  father 
hoped  that  honour  would  accrue  to  them  both. 

"  I've  money^  my  boy,  and  I've  money  to  spare,"  Mr. 
Breffit  the  elder  was  saying.  "  You'll  never  need  to  make 
a  penny  for  yourself;  so  I  don't  see,  my  boy,  really,  why 
you  should  go  into  business  at  all.  Speaking  frankly — I 
am  about  to  speak  to  you,  my  boy,  very  frankly — I  think 
it  better  that  you  should  not.  Not  that  there  is  any  dis- 
grace attaching  to  it  nowadays,  of  course.  The  old- 
fashioned  prejudice  against  "  being  in  trade  "  and  that  sort 
of  nonsense  is  dead.  To-day  even  the  best  people  are 
bringing  their  sons  up  to  it,  aye,  and  are  going  into  it 
themselves,  where  a  generation  ago  they  would  have 
scorned  the  idea.  But  I  don't  intend  that  you  shall  touch 
it,  my  boy.  Safer  not  to,  depend  upon  it,  safer  not  to. 
You  see,  at  present  you  are  merely  the  son  of  old  Joe 
Breffit;  until  you  have  felt  your  way  as  it  were,  and  are 
properly  launched  as  a  country  gentleman,  it  will  be  bet- 
ter to  run  no  risks." 

Breffit  fils  nodded  his  head  complacently.  The  scheme 
"  would  suit  him  down  to  the  ground."  His  talents  qual- 
ified him  eminently  to  do  it  justice.  Breffit  pere  drew  his 
arm-chair  closer,  lowered  his  voice,  and  continued  in  a 
whisper  of  unction  and  mystery. 

"  You  see,  I  want  you  to  be  just  the  gentleman,  my  boy. 
That's  the  trade  for  you.  Just  the  gentleman.  You  ought 
to  be  able  to  manage  that  to  a  nicety,  considering  the  pains 
I've  taken  to  make  you  one.  You  will  not  lack  for  money, 
as  I've  said;  and  you've  had  a  very  expensive  education. 
You've  got  friends  of  the  right  stamp  already,  and  you'll 


LORD  CHESTERFIELD  TO  HIS  SON         41 

have  more,  my  boy,  and  better,  if  you  will  only  learn  to 
play  your  cards.  Stand  over  there  by  the  window,  my 
boy,  where  the  light's  a  bit  clearer,  so  that  your  old  father 
can  have  a  look  at  you." 

A  little  sheepishly  Mr.  Breffit  the  younger  yielded  to  his 
sire's  enthusiasm.  No  artist  in  his  studio  held  his  glasses 
to  his  nose  with  a  more  deliberate  discretion,  nor  cocked 
his  head  more  lovingly  to  one  side,  nor  manoeuvred  his 
distance  more  cunningly  to  survey  a  chef  d'oeuvre  than  did 
Mr.  Joseph  Breffit  before  this  masterpiece  he  had  him- 
self created.     He  rubbed  his  hands. 

"  Capital,"  he  said,^ "  capital !  " 

"  Dash  it  all ! "  said  the  young  man,  reddening  awk- 
wardly. 

"  You  look  real  Ai,  my  boy,  you  do  indeed.  If  I  didn't 
know  better  I  should  take  you  to  be  the  son  of  a  gentle- 
man." 

The  son  looked  at  the  father,  and  laughed  with  a  slight 
air  of  constraint.  There  seemed  something  strange,  al- 
most uncanny,  about  a  father  like  that. 

"  I  only  hope,  my  boy,  that  you  will  not  neglect  your 
opportunities.  Nature  has  been  good  to  you,  and  things 
in  general  have  been  good  to  you,  and  a  lot  of  money  has 
been  spent  on  your  education.  A  man  cannot  send  his  son 
to  Harrow  and  Cambridge  without  having  to  pay.  But  I 
do  not  grudge  a  penny.  It  has  been  my  aim  that  you 
should  make  the  right  sort  of  friends — the  sort  of  friends 
that  will  get  you  on  in  the  world.  Now  all  I  ask,  my  boy, 
is  that  you  make  the  most  of  your  opportunities.  Do  that 
and  I  am  prepared  to  pay  a  lot  more.  I  have  got  my  eye 
on  a  place  in  the  county  that  is  just  coming  into  the  market, 
a  regular  fine  place,  Tufton  Hall.  Poor  Lord  Algernon 
Raynes,  brother  to  the  Duke  of  Wimbledon,  you  know, 
is  having  to  sell  it  lock,  stock,  and  barrel.  People  say  it's 
speculation  on  the  Stock  Exchange,  but  I  know  better, 
and  so  does  Mrs.  Dingley.  Now  I  am  thinking  of  renting 
that  place  or  buying  it  possibly,  with  the  cellar,  the  pic- 
tures, the  furniture,  the  stud,  the  shooting,  and  all  the  bag 
of  tricks.     It  will  be  useful  for  you  to  have  a  place  where 


42  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

you  can  entertain  your  friends.  Besides,  it  will  give  you 
a  sort  of  territorial  title :  young  Mr.  Breffit  of  Tufton  Hall, 
eh,  what?  Now,  what  do  you  say  to  it,  my  boy?  Sound 
idea,  don't  you  think  ?  " 

Mr.  Breffit  paused  with  his  hands  on  his  knees,  a  look  of 
eager  interrogation  in  his  face.  The  son  smiled  with  a 
serenity  that  had  a  touch  of  condescension  in  it.  But  he 
seemed  to  think  it  was  a  sound  idea. 

"  You  see,  my  boy,  Cuttisham  is  well  enough  for  old  Joe 
Breffit,  but  it  will  hardly  do  for  you.  Therefore  I  want 
you  to  give  a  wide  berth  to  the  townspeople,  as  you  will 
find  the  people  do  among  whom  you  are  going  to  live. 
When  in  Rome  you  must  do  like  the  Romans,  you  know. 
For  you  will  be  on  sufferance  among  them  until  you  have 
married  one  of  them  and  lived  down  the  prejudice  against 
you.  There  will  be  a  great  deal  of  prejudice,  my  boy,  at 
first.  You  will  find  it  up-hill  work,  with  all  your  fine 
college  friends,  to  make  good  your  footing,  and  be  received 
among  them  as  their  equal.  For  uppishness  there  is  noth- 
ing in  the  world  to  beat  your  old  county  family,  especially 
when  it  is  encumbered  with  a  short  purse  and  a  long 
pedigree.     '  The  poorer  the  prouder '  is  its  motto. 

"  There  are  the  Brokes  of  Covenden.  Of  course,  they 
were  a  great  family  once :  important  people  at  the  time  of 
the  Norman  Invasion,  friends  of  William  the  Conqueror 
and  that  sort  of  thing.  But  they  are  no  more  than  a  name 
now.  They  don't  count  a  snap  of  the  fingers  as  things  go 
nowadays,  and  they  are  as  poor  as  the  mice  under  the 
wainscot  of  a  Methodist  chapel.  But  for  pride,  my  boy, 
for  cold-drawn  pride,  I  should  say  that  Lucifer  compared 
with  Mr.  Broke  is  as  humble  as  Uriah  Heep.  I  know 
him,  and  he  knows  me,  but  only  in  the  way  of  business. 
He  looks  on  me  as  being  no  better  than  a  tradesman ;  and 
although  I  have  been  the  best  friend  he  and  his  have  had 
for  thirty  years,  he  looks  upon  me  as  little  better  than  his 
butler.  Mind,  my  boy,  I  am  not  saying  a  word  against 
him.  I  admire  him  for  it.  But  that  is  the  sort  of  thing 
you  will  have  to  fight.  It  is  no  use  people  making  money 
in  Cuttisham  and  then  setting  up  to  be  gentlefolk  in  his 


LORD  CHESTERFIELD  TO  HIS  SON         43 

neighbourhood.  If  I  was  a  Broke  and  had  been  in  the 
landed  gentry  for  a  little  matter  of  a  thousand  years, 
more  or  less,  I  should  be  the  same.  I  could  afford  to  keep 
my  pride  then,  even  if  I  could  not  afford  to  keep  my  tim- 
ber. Therefore,  my  boy,  you  will  understand  why  I  want 
you  to  dissociate  yourself  from  Cuttisham.  Your  old  fa- 
ther will  be  the  greatest  enemy  you  will  have  to  face." 

"  Not  at  all,"  said  Mr.  Breffit  the  younger  with  excel- 
lent politeness. 

"'  It  is  very  good  of  you,  my  boy,  to  say  he  will  not,  but 
I  know  better.  Your  neighbours  will  find  it  harder  to 
forgive  you  for  being  the  son  of  old  Joe  Breffit  than  if  you 
had  murdered  your  mother.  And  you  really  must  keep 
clear  of"  the  townspeople.  Only  this  morning  I  saw  you 
talking  with  young  Porter,  the  son  of  Porter  the  book- 
seller." 

"  Oh,  that  chap,"  said  Mr.  Breffit  the  younger,  with  an 
inflection  in  his  voice  that  delighted  the  parent.  "  He  went 
up  to  Trinity  with  a  scholarship." 

Breffit  pere  stood  aghast. 

"  You  don't  mean  to  say  that  that  fellow,  the  son  of 
Porter  the  bookseller,  was  at  Cambridge  too." 

"  Oh  yes,"  said  Breffit  iils  rather  mournfully. 

Breffit  pere  rubbed  his  pince-nez,  which  he  wore  by  a 
gold  cord  round  his  ear,  as  if  to  wipe  away  his  incredulity. 

"  I  never  heard  such  a  thing ;  it's  monstrous.  What  can 
the  fellow's  father  be  about?  You  can  depend  upon  it, 
my  boy,  that  trouble  will  come  of  it.  I  never  yet  saw  peo- 
ple set  up  above  their  station  in  life  without  they  learnt  to 
repent  it.  The  next  time  I  am  in  Porter's  shop  I  shall  ex- 
press my  opinion.  But  really,  one  would  have  thought  a 
place  with  the  standing  of  Cambridge  would  not  have  ad- 
mitted that  class  of  person." 

"  Oh,  there's  all  sorts,  you  know,"  said  Breffit  fils. 
"  Some  extraordinary  people  you  find  up  at  Cambridge,  I 
can  tell  you.  Why,  lots  of  them  haven't  been  to  a  public 
school." 

"  Ha !  "  said  Breffit  pere,  breathing  heavily.  "  What  a 
pity!     One  would  have  thought  an  ancient  seat  of  learn- 


44  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

ing  of  that  kind,  with  its  traditions  and  its  history,  would 
have  been  as  exclusive  as  possible.  It  is  sad  to  think  that 
it  throws  its  doors  open  to  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry.  It  is 
not  surprising  that  mere  learning  is  not  thought  so  much 
of  as  it  used  to  be.  If  I  had  only  known  of  this  sooner 
you  should  have  gone  to  Oxford." 

*'  It  is  just  as  bad  there,*'  said  Breffit  £ls. 

"  You  astonish  me.  One  always  understood  that  our 
older  universities  were  solely  for  the  education  of  the  sons 
of  gentlemen." 

There  was  a  :considerable  pathos  in  the  voice  of  Breffit 
pere,  as  one  overwhelmed  by  disillusion.  And  in  his  face 
was  incredulity.  However,  in  the  flood-tide  of  this  emo- 
tion there  came  a  knock  on  the  door  of  his  room. 

A  junior  clerk  appeared. 

"  A  gentleman  to  see  you,  sir." 

"Name?" 

"  Mr.  Books,  sir." 

"Mr.  Who?" 

"  Mr.  Books,  sir." 

"  Never  heard  of  the  man.  I  can't  see  him  now ;  he  has 
not  an  appointment.  Tell  him  I'm  engaged,  but  if  he 
cares  to  wait  I'll  see  him  presently." 

As  the  boy  closed  the  door  and  retired  to  convey  the 
information  to  the  unexpected  visitor,  Mr.  Breffit  ob- 
served, "  One  of  those  pestilent  fellows  touting  for  en- 
cyclopedias.    One  is  not  safe  from  anybody  these  days." 


CHAPTER  V 

A  PRIVATE  VIEW  OF  THE  FEUDAL  SPIRIT 

WHILE  the  modern  Lord  Chesterfield  continued  to 
impart  those  elements  of  behaviour  which  are  so 
necessary  to  the  English  gentleman,  the  grand  exemplar 
of  his  teaching,  flower  of  the  British  squirearchy,  sans  peur 
et  sans  reproche,  the  mirror  and  the  consummation  of  what 
he  wished  to  see  his  pupil  waited  in  the  ante-room  in  his 
wet  macintosh,  twirling  his  hat  in  his  impatient  hands. 
The  temper  of  the  paragon  was  hardly  at  its  best.  It  had 
been  sorely  tried  of  late.  When  he  left  Covenden  that 
morning  it  had  been  a  little  out  of  its  normal  plane ;  and 
now,  as  he  sat  with  a  pool  of  water  forming  round  his  feet 
on  its  descent  from  his  clothes,  he  felt  his  vexation  swell 
about  him  drop  by  drop,  in  the  slow  proportion  of  the  lake 
upon  the  floor.  It  was  an  experience  for  one  of  his 
pontifical  spirit  to  be  kept  at  the  door  by  his  agent.  Such 
a  thing  had  not  happened  before.  It  was  a  trifle,  yet  some- 
how it  went  against  the  grain.  It  was  too  impalpable  to 
resent,  yet  it  fretted  his  sensitive  machinery  like  a  speck 
of  dust  in  the  eye. 

Mr.  Broke  was  a  familiar  figure  to  the  clerks  who 
thumbed  their  ledgers  behind  their  lattice-work  of  glass. 
With  nobody  was  the  Guv'nor  so  replete  with  flummery, 
not  even  with  the  Duke,  the  Bishop,  and  Lord  Croxton, 
as  he  was  with  this  red-faced  man  with  the  big  nose  and 
the  great  voice,  who  looked  like  a  farmer.  The  Guv'nor 
gave  you  pins  and  needles  all  over,  he  fairly  made  you 
squirm,  he  did,  when  he  put  on  his  fancy  manner  and 
buttered  it  thick  with  this  Mr.  Broke  of  Covenden.  With 
trepidation  they  began  to  note  that  a  cloud  was  darkening 
the  brows  of  the  great  man,  and  that  he  beat  his  knee  with 

45 


46  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

his  riding-crop  in  a  way  you  couldn't  mistake.  At  last 
his  impatience  grew  so  marked  that  one  of  the  clerks  whis- 
pered to  the  boy  who  had  taken  in  his  name: 

"Porter,  you  told  the  Guv'nor  it  was  Mr.  Broke?" 

**  I  thought  he  said  his  name  was  Mr.  Books,"  said  the 
young  clerk  nervously. 

"  Then  the  Guv'nor  don't  know  he's  'ere.  Go  and  tell 
him  it's  Mr.  Broke,  you  young  fool.  My  aunt!  I 
wouldn't  be  you." 

The  unlucky  junior,  a  younger  son  of  Porter  the  book- 
seller, who  had  been  in  his  present  situation  a  fortnight, 
bore  this  information  into  the  inner  office  in  a  state  of 
distress  that  drew  broad  grins  from  his  peers.  In  almost 
the  same  instant  that  the  news  was  communicated  to  him 
Mr.  Breffit  bounced  out  of  his  room. 

"Oh,  my  dear  Mr.  Broke,  how  very  annoying!  A 
thousand  apologies — a  thousand  apologies!  Pray,  sir, 
come  in.  I  was  not  aware  that  you  were  waiting.  That 
stupid  boy  misunderstood  your  name.  Terribly  provoking 
— terribly  provoking!  But  upon  my  word  it  shall  not 
occur  again." 

"  Don't  mention  it,  Breffit." 

Mr.  Broke  did  not  seem  particularly  grateful  for  this 
balm  for  his  feelings,  but  looked  steadily  past  his  agent 
towards  the  young  man,  whom  he  had  never  seen  before, 
who  stood  at  the  end  of  the  room  with  his  back  to  the 
window. 

"  My  son,  sir — pray  allow  me  to  do  myself  the  honour 
of  presenting  my  son." 

There  was  a  note  of  inexorable  pride  in  the  voice  of  the 
father.  However,  so  preoccupied  was  Mr.  Broke  that 
this  somewhat  florid  introduction  had  to  be  repeated  before 
he  grew  aware  of  it. 

"  Your  son,  Breffit?  "  he  said  at  last,  "  ah,  yes!  I  was 
not  aware  you  had  a  boy  so  old.  Let  us  hope  he  will 
make  as  good  a  man  as  his  father." 

"  He  will  make  a  good  deal  better,  sir,  I  hope  and  trust," 
said  Mr.  Breffit  proudly.  "  My  father  didn't  send  me  to 
Harrow  and  Cambridge." 


THE  FEUDAL  SPIRIT  47 

"  Harrow  and  Cambridge ! — oh  really,"  Broke  murmured 
almost  involuntarily. 

"  You  see,  sir,"  said  Mr.  Breffit,  "  I  have  given  him  the 
education  of  a  gentleman  because  I  intend  him  to  be  one. 
I  have  more  money  than  I  shall  ever  want  for  myself,  and 
I  intend  to  invest  it,  sir,  in  this  boy  of  mine,  so  that  he 
shall  hold  his  head  up  with  the  best,  and  be  a  credit  to 
me." 

"  Ah,  yes,"  said  Broke. 

As  he  spoke,  a  shade  of  annoyance  passed  across  his 
face.  Talk  of  this  kind  was  painfully  out  of  harmony 
with  his  ideas.  Let  the  cobbler  stick  to  his  last,  was  an 
article  of  his  faith.  What  would  become  of  the  social 
hierarchy  if  this  sort  of  thing  went  on  in  England,  of  all 
places  in  the  world ! 

Mr.  Breffit,  as  keenly  he  scanned  the  face  of  the  grand 
exemplar  to  learn  the  effect  of  his  audacity — alas,  that  his 
instincts  proclaimed  it  to  be  so! — was  only  too  quick  to 
detect  the  sinister  light  in  his  eyes.  He  hastened  to  re- 
move what  he  divined  to  be  the  cause. 

"  I  hope  you  won't  consider,  Mr.  Broke,"  he  said,  "  that 
I  have  been  guilty  of  rashness.  I  thought  out  the  matter 
years  ago,  and  I  should  certainly  not  have  given  my  son  an 
education  of  this  kind  had  I  not  intended  to  keep  him  in 
affluence,  sir,  afterwards.  You  see,  Mr.  Broke,  he  is  the 
only  boy  I've  got ;  he  is  my  all,  do  you  see,  sir ;  and  I  want 
to  be  able  to  look  up  to  him  and  say,  in  the  words  of  Shake- 
speare, the  immortal  bard,  '  This  is  a  Man ! '  And  Mr. 
Broke,  I  may  tell  you  in  confidence,  between  ourselves,  sir, 
that  my  boy  will  be  one  of  the  first  men  in  this  county.  It 
won't  be  up  like  a  rocket,  and  down  like  a  stick  with  him. 
He  will  be  a  very  rich  man." 

Pride  and  enthusiasm  had  seized  the  father.  A  darling 
scheme  had  been  cloistered  in  his  heart  these  many  years ; 
and  now  for  the  first  time,  as  it  burst  into  the  articulate,  he 
was  overwhelmed.  Yet  even  as  the  vaunts  started  from 
his  lips  he  knew  that  had  he  been  in  the  full  enjoyment 
of  that  control,  that  sanity  he  had  the  habit  of  exacting 
from  himself,  he  would  never  have  inflicted  his  personal 


48  BiROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

affairs  on  one  whose  condition  rendered  him  unsympa- 
thetic. Nature,  however,  scannot  always  be  the  slave  of 
policy.  For  once  she  had  proclaimed  herself  boldly  in 
Mr.  Breffit.  He  was  slightly  bewildered;  he  was  rather 
disconcerted ;  he  had  a  faint  sense  of  humiliation  as  Broke 
confronted  him  with  compressed  lips  and  sombre  eyes. 

The  aspect  of  the  paragon  was  solemnity  itself ;  it  was 
not  his  habit  to  inquire  into  the  aspirations  of  those  who 
served  him.  Nor  was  he  there  to  attend  a  recital  of 
Breffit's  fantastic  ideas.  Odd  ideas  they  were  too — on 
the  verge  of  moonshine.  Really,  it  was  not  at  all  like 
him!  Rather  pointedly  the  manner  of  the  great  man 
showed  that  he  was  not  there  to  discuss  the  private  affairs 
of  his  agent.  For  once,  however,  the  man  of  tact,  the 
courtier,  was  obtuse.  Now  that  the  long-imprisoned  tor- 
rent had  forced  those  flood-gates  in  his  soul  it  must  gush 
out  until  it  had  run  dry. 

"  I  hope  you  don't  consider  me  unwise,  sir,  in  putting 
such  notions  in  my  boy's  head.  You  see,  I  am  going  to 
buy  Tufton  Hall,  poor  Lord  Algernon's  place,  for  my  boy ; 
and  I'm  going  to  set  him  up  in  it,  with  ten  thousand  a 
year  of  his  own.  And  if  that's  not  enough,  he  can  have 
more,  sir.  I  don't  intend  that  there  shall  be  any  doubt 
about  his  position;  and  although  he  is  the  son  of  a  self- 
made  man — I  know  what  /  am,  Mr.  Broke — I  fail  to  see 
that  that  should  be  anything  to  his  detriment.  He  will 
have  his  stake  in  the  county  just  like  anybody  else,  al- 
though he  may  not,  like  some,  be  adorned  with  blue  blood, 
or  have  a  handle  to  his  name.  And  I  hope,  sir,  that  pres- 
ently, in  the  fullness  of  time,  he  may  marry  in  a  direction 
that  his  means  will  justify,  and  stand  for  Parliament  and 
that  sort  of  thing." 

^  The  face  of  Broke  was  a  study.  Had  his  mood  been 
lighter  he  might  have  been  content  to  be  amused.  There 
was  something  comic  in  such  an  outbreak  in  a  man  whom 
he  had  known  for  thirty  years  as  a  sane,  discreet,  respon- 
sible fellow,  who  had  never  shown  a  tendency  to  presume 
upon  his  worth.  But  he  had  no  mind  to  laugh  at  anything 
this  morning.     He   was   annoyed.     He  was  annoyed   in 


THE  FEUDAL  SPIRIT  49 

much  the  same  way  he  would  have  been  had  Porson  bent 
over  his  chair  during  dinner  and  whispered  "  I  can  recom- 
mend the  brown  sherry,  sir !  "  Could  it  be  that  old  Breffit's 
mind  was  giving  way  a  little?  Or,  again,  this  amazing 
behaviour  of  old  Breffit's  was  the  result,  perhaps,  of  this 
money-curse  that  nowadays  was  making  hay  of  everything. 
As  soon  as  a  man  got  money,  no  matter  how  he  came  by 
it,  he  seemed  to  feel  that  the  mere  possession  of  the 
demoralizing  stuff  lifted  him  out  of  his  class.  As  though 
money  made  any  difference!  What  these  absurd  people 
could  not  see  was  that  a  man  was  what  he  was ;  you  could 
not  make  a  silk  purse  out  of  the  ear  of  a  sow. 

"  Breffit,"  he  said  tartly,  "  I  have  very  little  time  to 
spare,  and  there  is  something  of  importance  I  wish  to  talk 
about.     I  am  afraid  we  must  discuss  it  alone." 

The  son  withdrew  with  a  flush  of  anger.  He  was  stung 
by  the  tone.  He  went  the  more  hurriedly  because  his 
father,  instead  of  resenting  it,  began  to  cringe  before  it, 
and  was  actually  breaking  forth  into  apologies.  This 
pompous,  over-bearing  old  bird  was  *'  a  bit  of  a  blood  " 
apparently;  but  fancy  the  guv'nor  taking  it  like  that!  A 
matter  of  business,  he  supposed.  Lucky  for  him  he  would 
not  have  to  go  into  business !     Insulting  old  bounder ! 

When  the  door  had  closed  upon  Breffit  His,  and  Breffit 
pere  had  been  somewhat  rudely  summoned  out  of  his  day- 
dream by  the  rasp  in  the  voice  of  his  client.  Broke  plunged 
without  further  preface  into  the  matter  that  had  brought 
him  there. 

"  I  am  in  a  tight  place,"  he  said.  "  No.  3  Broke  Street 
will  have  to  go.     I  should  prefer  to  sell  it." 

"  A  great  pity,"  said  Mr.  Breffit,  with  an  immediate 
resumption  of  the  official  manner,  ''  a  great  pity." 

"  I  agree  with  you,  Breffit,  but  I  am  afraid  there  is  no 
alternative.  I  understand  that  further  mortgages  are  im- 
possible, and  I  must  have  some  ready  money.  The  only 
thing  is  to  let  No.  3  go  the  way  of  the  rest  of  the  property. 
Fifty  years  ago  the  whole  street  belonged  to  my  father; 
yet  now,  as  you  know,  this  is  the  only  house  in  it  that  still 
belongs  to  us." 


so  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  Purchaser  preferred,  I  believe,  sir  ?  " 

"  Yes ;  do  you  want  to  buy  a  town  house  for  your  son  ?  " 

*'  Not  at  present,  sir,  not  at  present,"  said  Mr.  Breffit, 
upon  whom  the  attempt  at  irony  was  lost.  "  But  that  will 
come  all  in  good  time,  I  hope  and  trust.  And  in  the  mean- 
time, sir,  I  think  I  can  find  a  purchaser." 

"  You  are  a  wonderful  man,  Breffit.  Who  have  you  in 
mind?" 

"  Well— er.  Lord  Salmon,"  said  Mr.  Breffit,  with  a  be- 
coming measure  of  hesitation.  "  I  am  sure  Broke  Street 
would  suit  his  lordship.  He  is  looking  for  a  house  a  little 
more  commodious  and  in  a  neighbourhood  a  little  less 
doubtful  than  that  of  his  present  residence  in  Berkeley 
Square.  And  he  would  prefer  to  buy.  I  happen  to  know 
he  doesn't  care  to  rent  anything,  except  a  box  at  the 
Opera." 

"  Why  don't  the  fellow  buy  Buckingham  Palace  ?  " 

"  Indeed,  sir,  why  not  ?  But  perhaps  the  Queen  wishes 
to  retain  it  during  her  lifetime  for  the  sake  of  its  associa- 
tions." 

This  absence  of  mental  guile  had  been  an  asset  in  Mr. 
Breffit's  career.  It  was  an  aid  and  a  stimulus  to  men  of 
Broke's  mould,  whose  sense  of  humour  was  broad  and 
primitive. 

The  name  of  Lord  Salmon  was  the  proverbial  red  rag 
to  this  typical  John  Bull.  Nothing  was  so  distasteful  to 
him  as  the  mention  of  that  peer.  Even  the  word  Radical 
was  not  such  a  frank  offence.  The  fellow  was  always 
obtruding  himself  one  way  and  another,  and  there  was  no 
limit  to  his  presumption.  The  effrontery  that  could  put 
a  price  on  Covenden  was  capable  of  all  things. 

''  He  shall  not  have  it." 

Mr.  Breffit  shook  a  deprecatory  head. 

"  I  am  afraid,"  he  said,  "  we  are  hardly  in  a  position  to 
be  nice.  We  are  fortunate,  sir, — highly  fortunate — to 
have  the  prospect  of  even  one  purchaser  who  is  at  all 
likely  to  buy  it  on  our  own  terms.  To  Lord  Salmon  money 
is  no  obstacle." 


THE  FEUDAL  SPIRIT  51 

"  So  he  has  been  good  enough  to  say,  provided  a  place 
fits  his  fancy,"  said  Broke,  with  a  grim  face. 

There  could  be  no  doubt  that  the  draught  was  bitter. 
But  the  old  and  trusted  family  physician  had  decided  that 
the  sick  man  must  swallow  it,  in  spite  of  the  wry  faces 
that  he  made. 

"  Believe  me,  Mr.  Broke,  if  you  really  must  part  with 
the  house  it  would  be  suicidal  to  throw  away  a  chance  that 
is  not  likely  to  recur.  Had  Lord  Salmon  dropped  from 
heaven  he  could  not  have  appeared  at  a  moment  more 
opportune." 

"  Devilish  good  of  him." 

Brokers  face  was  a  sufficient  acknowledgment  of  his 
ineptitude.  It  fretted  him  to  the  soul  to  be  at  the  mercy  of 
this  Jew.  Even  the  nationality  added  to  the  sense  of 
humiliation;  he  had  the  fierce  contempt  for  the  Chosen 
Race  of  his  forebears  in  the  Middle  Ages. 

"  I — ah — suppose  you — ah — must  use  your  own  discre- 
tion, Breffit,"  he  said,  with  a  reluctance  that  laid  his  feel- 
ings bare.  **  You — ah — must  dispose  of  the  house  to  the 
best  advantage.     I — ah — ^leave  the  matter  entirely  to  you." 

The  agitated  gentleman  mopped  his  head. 

Mr.  Breffit  had  not  been  slow  to  observe  the  conflict  in 
the  face  of  his  client ;  and  his  tenderness  for  him  was  very 
real.  In  a  curious  impersonal  way  he  had  a  profound 
reverence  for  Broke,  and  it  was  not  made  less  because  he 
had  such  an  intimate  knowledge  of  the  character  of  his 
idol.  Provincial  in  his  outlook,  Mr.  Breffit  was  not  a  fool. 
There  were  certain  kinds  of  things  in  which  he  was  by 
no  means  superficial.  He  could  read  Broke's  prejudices 
like  the  page  of  a  newspaper. 

He  saw  the  man's  pride  was  bleeding.  Never  before 
had  he  seen  it  so  distressed.  Indeed  the  sight  was  so  piti- 
ful he  could  hardly  bear  it. 

"Mr.  Broke,"  he  said,  "will  you — er— permit  me  to 
make  a  suggestion.  I  daresay  we  can  adjust  this  little 
matter  without — er — having  recourse  to  Lord  Salmon. 
I  think  I  see  my  way  to  taking  over  the  house  as  an  invest- 


52  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

ment  against  the  time  my  son  marries  and  enters  Parlia- 
ment." 

He  was  prompted  by  one  of  those  odd  bursts  of  dis- 
interestedness that  may  sometimes  overtake  even  a  keen 
man  of  business.  The  idea  uppermost  in  his  mind  was  to 
spare  the  feelings  of  his  client.  And  he  might  have  suc- 
ceeded but  for  that  unlucky  clause  in  regard  to  his  son, 
which  was  no  more  than  an  afterthought  and  a  sop  to  his 
commercial  instincts.  Therefore  the  suggestion  jarred 
upon  Broke  in  much  the  same  manner  as  if  it  had  been 
made  by  a  thrifty  footman  who  had  come  forward  with 
an  offer  of  pecuniary  assistance.  It  was  not  easy  to  play 
the  philanthropist  with  a  man  of  this  kidney. 

"  Breffit,"  he  said,  *'  I  leave  the  matter  entirely  in  your 
hands.     It — ah — ceases  to  interest  me." 

Suddenly  he  laughed  discordantly  and  held  out  his  hand. 

"  Good  morning,  Breffit.  Let  me  know  the  price.  And 
remember  that  time  means  a  great  deal." 

However,  as  he  moved  to  the  door,  Mr.  Breffit  detained 
him. 

"  I  have  been  asked,  sir,  whether  you  would  accept  a 
seat  on  the  board  of  a  limited  liability  company.  If  I  may 
say  so  it  is  an  easy  way  of  adding  five  hundred  a  year  to 
one's  income.  I  should  not  have  mentioned  it,  sir,  only 
nowadays  numbers — numbers  of  men  of  the  highest  stand- 
ing— do  it  constantly." 

"  What  is  the  name  of  the  company  ?  " 

"  The  Thames  Valley  Goldfields  Syndicate.  I  may  say 
that  your  brother-in-law.  Lord  Bosket,  has  signified  his 
intention  of  joining  the  board  after  allotment." 

"  Indeed ;  who  has  prevailed  on  him  ?  " 

"Well — er — I  rather  think  the  promoter." 

"  Who,  pray,  is  the  promoter  ?  " 

"— Er— Lord  Salmon." 

"  I — ah  decline  to  have  anything  to  do  with  it." 

Broke  took  a  sharp  step  to  the  rain. 

When  Mr.  Breffit  had  bowed  the  great  man  from  his 
door  and  had  watched  him  mount  his  horse  and  ride  away 
into  the  mists  of  the  High  Street,  he  returned  to  his  room 


THE  FEUDAL  SPIRIT  53 

with  a  very  grave  air  and  rang  the  bell.  It  was  answered 
by  the  youthful  clerk  who  had  been  guilty  of  such  a  ter- 
rible blunder.  Mr.  Breffit  put  his  hand  in  his  pocket  and 
pulled  out  a  number  of  silver  coins.  He  spread  these  out 
on  his  open  palm  and  selected  two  half-crowns  very  sor- 
rowfully. 

"  Porter,"  he  said,  "  here  are  a  week's  wages,  and 
please  consider  yourself  as  no  longer  in  my  employ.  Such 
a  thing  has  happened  through  your  carelessness  that  has 
not  occurred  in  all  the  course  of  my  professional  experi- 
ence. My  oldest  and  most  respected  client!  Mr.  Broke 
of  Covenden,  of  all  people  in  the  world!  Go  at  once, 
Porter — ^go  before  I  say  something  harsh." 

The  boy,  looking  very  white  and  frightened,  opened  his 
lips  to  make  some  desperate  sort  of  a  reply.  Before  he 
could  frame  it,  however,  Mr.  Breffit  stopped  him  with  a 
magisterial  finger. 

"  Not  a  word,  Porter.    There  is  nothing  to  be  said." 

Tears  were  in  the  eyes  of  the  boy.  He  murmured  some- 
thing, but  the  only  words  that  were  audible  seemed  to  re- 
late to  his  father  and  the  disgrace. 

"  It  is  a  disgrace,  that  I  grant  you.  Porter.  As  for  your 
father,  I  have  no  idea  what  he  will  think,  but  he  ought  to 
feel  it.  By  the  way,  that  reminds  me;  you  can  tell  your 
father  for  me,  Porter,  that  he  is  a  very  foolish  man.  I 
understand  he  has  sent  your  elder  brother  to  Cambridge. 
It  was  brought  to  my  notice  this  morning  for  the  first  time, 
or  he  could  have  depended  on  it  that  he  would  have  heard 
from  me  sooner.  I  don't  know  whose  boy  we  shall  see 
there  next.  Has  Gage  the  greengrocer  sent  his  boy  to 
Cambridge,  too,  or  is  he  wanted  at  the  shop  to  take  round 
the  potatoes  and  the  cabbages?  When  I  was  a  boy  our 
universities  were  reserved  exclusively  for  the  sons  of  gen- 
tlemen. But  your  father  will  live  to  repent  it,  Porter;  I 
never  yet  saw  a  man  give  false  ideas  to  his  children  with- 
out having  cause  to  regret  it.  Now  go;  and  mind  you 
don't  apply  to  me  for  a  character." 

The  boy  placed  the  five  shillings  in  his  pocket  and  with- 
drew.    He  put  on  his  mackintosh,  tucked  his  office-coat 


54  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

under  his  arm,  and  went  forth  mechanically  in  the  direc- 
tion of  his  father's  bookshop.  He  was  as  stunned  as  if  he 
had  received  a  blow  on  the  head ;  he  could  think  of  noth- 
ing; and  although  it  was  pouring  with  rain,  he  stood  gaz- 
ing a  full  quarter  of  an  hour  into  a  pastrycook's  window, 
which,  being  now  to  let,  had  not  so  much  as  a  tart  to 
relieve  its  air  of  desolation. 


CHAPTER  VI 

FORESHADOWS   THE   NEED   FOR   A   HERO 
AND  A   HEROINE 

WHEN  Broke  rode  home,  care  still  sat  behind  the 
horseman.  A  brougham,  drawn  by  a  fine  pair  of 
horses,  rolled  up  and  down  in  the  rain  before  his  door. 
He  did  not  need  to  look  at  the  coronet  borne  by  this 
vehicle  to  learn  to  whom  it  belonged.  It  was  more  fa- 
miliar to  him  than  consisted  with  his  peace  of  mind. 

He  found  his  family  already  at  luncheon.  To-day  there 
was  no  meet  of  the  Parkshire  Hounds ;  and  the  solace  was 
accorded  him  of  his  wife,  his  six  daughters,  and  his  brother 
and  sister-in-law. 

**  We  are  taking  luncheon  a  little  earlier  to-day,  Ed- 
mund,'* said  his  wife.  "  There  is  a  meeting  of  the  Cuttis- 
ham  Temperance  Society  at  the  Town  Hall  at  a  quarter 
to  three.     Emma  is  going  to  preside." 

"  Supported  by  me,"  said  Emma's  spouse  in  a  somewhat 
low-spirited  manner.  "  Lucky  me ;  doosid  nice  to  be  me — 
what?" 

"  Charles,"  said  Lady  Bosket,  focussing  her  tortoiseshell 
glasses  six  inches  from  her  nose. 

Lord  Bosket  added  dismally  a  little  soda  water  to  his 
whisky. 

Lady  Bosket  was  a  tall,  gaunt  woman  with  large  fea- 
tures and  high  cheek  bones.  Her  countenance,  however, 
might  be  compared,  perhaps  ungallantly,  to  that  of  a  hen. 
Not  one  of  your  plebeian  barndoor  species,  but  rather  a 
variety  of  game-fowl,  a  very  superior,  high-stepping  hen. 
Superiority  was,  indeed,  her  prevailing  note,  the  key  in 
which  she  had  been  conceived.     Everything  about  her  pro- 

55 


56  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

claimed  it.  Whether  it  was  the  way  in  which  she  wore 
her  back  hair  or  the  prose  with  which  she  enriched  Eng- 
lish literature,  she  was  invariably  a  precieuse  who  con- 
veyed the  impression  that  she  was  one  apart  from  the 
vulgar  herd. 

It  was  reserved,  however,  for  her  voice  to  be  her  crown- 
ing glory.  As  a  peal  of  bells  may  enhance  the  nobility  of 
a  cathedral  whatever  the  splendours  of  its  architecture 
or  the  venerable  aggregation  of  its  years,  so  that  remark- 
able mechanism  gave  the  last  touch  to  the  personality 
of  this  lady.  And  to  pursue  the  sacred  figure  to  which 
we  have  ventured  to  compare  her,  which  after  all  is  the 
one  designed  to  please  her  most,  her  voice,  like  that  of  the 
cathedral,  was  right  up  at  the  top. 

"  Edmund,"  said  his  sister-in-law,  "  allow  me  to  con- 
gratulate you  upon  Billy's  engagement.  It  is  so  clever 
of  Jane.  I  am  sure  it  takes  quite  a  load  of  responsibility 
off  the  shoulders  of  us  all." 

"  You  appreciate,  Emma,  of  course,  that  nothing  is 
settled  yet,"  said  Mrs.  Broke.  "  At  present  it  is  a  little 
premature  to  speak  of  it  as  an  accompHshed  fact." 

"  People  are  talking  of  nothing  else,"  said  Lady  Bosket. 
"  Everybody  agrees  that  it  is  so  providential.  People  are 
unanimous  in  your  praise,  my  dear;  everybody  knows 
that  poor  dear  Harry  wanted  to  marry  her." 

"  Good  luck,  my  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Broke  placidly. 
"  They  were  always  fond  of  each  other,  even  when  they 
used  to  fight  in  the  nursery." 

*'  People  say,  of  course,  that  the  keenness  is  mostly  on 
her  side.  Still,  it  would  be  rather  too  much  like  a  novel, 
would  it  not,  if  it  were  on  both  ?  " 

**  Has  it  not  occurred  to  you,  my  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Broke, 
*'  that  mutual  affection  comes  after  marriage  as  a  rule  ? 
All  the  most  perfectly  harmonious  unions  I  know  have 
begun  in  that  way.  Surely  it  is  best  that  marriage  should 
begin  on  the  mere  ground  of  common  tolerance.  It  is  so 
much  safer,  my  dear.  Before  marriage  mutual  affection 
seems  a  little  incongruous.  One  feels  it  to  be  a  slight 
forcing  of  the  note." 


A  HERO  AND  A  HEROINE  57 

"How  does  it  strike  you  afterwards?"  inquired  Lord 
Bosket. 

"  You  are  a  cynic,  Charles,"  said  his  sister  archly. 
"  You  should  be  like  Diogenes  and  live  in  a  tub." 

"  Wish  I  could.  Pretty  good  judge  o'  the  game,  that 
old  feller.     No  room  for  two  in  his  little  box." 

"  Miss  Wayling  is  a  charming  girl,"  said  Lady  Bosket  in 
her  most  detached  voice.  "  And  she  has  a  beautiful  na- 
ture. She  has  that  statuesque  marble  purity  which  is  so 
full  of  Greek  feeling.  How  one  welcomes  such  a  refine- 
ment after  a  surfeit  of  the  athletic,  *'  horsey,"  unfeminine 
creatures  that  one  meets  everywhere  at  the  present  day." 

Lady  Bosket  had  recourse  to  her  glasses,  and  ingeniously 
manipulated  them  in  such  a  manner  that  she  could  stare 
at  all  her  six  nieces  at  once.  Five  of  them  quailed  before 
the  resolution  of  her  gaze,  but  Joan,  the  eldest,  the  one 
with  the  Roman  spirit,  happened  to  be  drinking  a  glass 
of  water.  She  suspended  that  operation  and  met  her 
aunt's  scrutiny  with  a  fearless  one  of  her  own. 

"  Aunty  means  that  for  you  little  gals,"  said  their  tender- 
hearted but  extremely  tactless  Uncle  Charles,  who  was  so 
sensitive  that  he  was  hurt  by  anything  that  gave  pain  to 
things  for  which  he  had  an  affection.  "  That's  a  dig  at 
you;  but  don't  you  mind  it.  I'll  bring  you  some  choco- 
lates to-morrow;  you  know — the  sort  in  the  pink  boxes 
tied  with  blue  ribbon.  And  I'll  lend  you  Bobtail  when 
she  gets  her  leg  all  right." 

He  sighed,  and  helped  himself  reflectively  to  whisky. 

"  Charles !  "  said  Lady  Bosket. 

It  was  Mrs.  Broke's  constant  aim  when  these  near  rela- 
tions honoured  her  with  their  presence  to  remain  a  neutral, 
and  to  steer  the  conversation  into  channels  unvexed  by 
the  waters  of  controversy. 

"What  is  going  to  be  done  with  Tufton?  Have  you 
heard,  Edmund  ?  " 

"  Breffit  told  me  this  morning  that  he  was  going  to  buy 
it,"  said  Broke. 

"For  whom?" 

"  For  his  son." 


58  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

''  For  his  son !  " 

Mrs.  Broke  was  frankly  incredulous. 

"  Who,  pray,  is  Breffit  ?  "  asked  Lady  Bosket. 

"  Surely  you  know  Breffit  the  land  agent,"  said  Broke. 
"  I  thought  everybody  knew  old  Breffit.  He  is  a  char- 
acter." 

"  The  weird  old  thing  who  wears  such  outlandish 
clothes,"  said  Mrs.  Broke.  "  In  his  way  he  is  the  most 
famous  man  in  the  county." 

"  Oh-h,"  said  Lady  Bosket,  drawing  a  deep  breath. 

"  The  old  man  who  is  always  so  painfully  polite,"  said 
Mrs.  Broke ;  "  who  always  has  a  finger  in  every  pie  and 
always  seems  overcome  by  emotion  when  he  talks  to  me." 

"  That  man,"  said  Lady  Bosket.  "  That  old  humbug. 
Do  you  mean  to  say  he  has  bought  Tufton,  that  the 
Raynes's  have  had  for  generations,  and  that  he  proposes 
to  put  his  son  in  it  ?  " 

*'  I  do,"  said  Broke  grimly.  "  He  was  good  enough  to 
tell  me  this  morning  that  he  was  going  to  set  his  son  up  in 
the  county  in  such  a  manner  that  he  could  hold  his  head 
up  among  the  best." 

His  sister-in-law  elevated  her  high  shoulders  piteously. 

"  I  am  only  repeating  his  words,"  said  Broke,  with  a  cold 
chuckle.  "  I  had  the  honour  of  an  introduction  to  the 
young  chap  this  morning." 

*'  My  dear  Edmund ! "  said  Lady  Bosket. 

"  I  daresay  Mr.  Breffit  intends  that  you  shall  act  as  his 
sponsor  in  his  progress  through  the  social  world,"  said 
Mrs.  Broke,  whose  smile  had  gained  in  lustre.  "  When 
the  worst  comes  to  the  worst  and  we  are  cast  penniless 
upon  the  streets,  as  I  suppose  we  must  be  in  the  end,  we 
shall  be  able  to  keep  body  and  soul  together  by  playing 
Mentor  to  these  young  Telemachuses.  You,  my  dear  Ed- 
mund, will  be  allotted  the  department  for  the  social  ad- 
vancement of  the  sons  of  local  tradespeople,  while  I  can 
open  a  bureau  for  the  presentation  at  Court  of  the  Ameri- 
can Miss,  with  auxiliary  branches  for  the  polishing  of 
popper  and  mommer.  And  I  can  fill  up  the  rest  of  my 
time  with  the  introduction  to  good  society  of  all  and  sun- 


A  HERO  AND  A  HEROINE  59 

dry;  and  you,  my  dear  Edmund,  can  fill  up  yours  as  a 
director  of  public  companies  under  the  aegis  of  our  friend 
Lord  Salmon,  which  reminds  me  that  I  have  already  made 
a  promise  to  him  that  you  will  accept  a  seat  on  the  board 
of  The  Thames  Valley  Goldfields  Syndicate,  in  considera- 
tion of  which  act  of  grace  you  are  to  receive  the  sum  of 
five  hundred  a  year." 

"  My  dear,  you  are  growing  quite  debased,"  said  Lady 
Bosket. 

"  What  is  that,  Jane?  "  said  Broke  grufHy.  "  You  have 
made  a  promise  to — ^ah  that  fellow  Salmon  ?  Why,  Brefht 
approached  me  this  morning  on  the — ah  same  subject,  and 
I  refused  point-blank.     What  can  you  be  thinking  about !  " 

"  The  butcher  and  the  baker,  the  rates  and  the  taxes,  my 
dear.  Five  hundred  a  year  is  five  hundred  a  year  to 
paupers  like  ourselves.  Lord  Salmon  has  very  kindly 
promised  to  come  this  afternoon  to  discuss  the  project 
with  you." 

"  I  decline  to  see  him." 

"  Don't  be  more  impracticable,  my  dear,  than  you  can 
help." 

"  Shorten  rein  a  bit,  old  son,"  said  Lord  Bosket.  "  Sal- 
mon is  not  half  a  bad  feller.  People  can  say  what  they 
like,  but  you  can  take  it  from  me  that  Salmon's  all  right. 
He  preserves  his  foxes  and  turns  down  his  birds,  and  he 
don't  play  a  bad  hand  at  bridge.  He  don't  pretend  to  be 
a  Nimrod  in  the  saddle,  but  when  he  bags  a  keeper  he 
always  does  the  handsome  thing.  Nobody  can  deny  that 
he  drives  good  cattle,  aye,  and  owns  it  too,  and  he  pays 
his  footin'  to  the  Hunt  like  a  sportsman." 

"  He  paid  his  footing  to  the  peerage  also.  No — ^ah 
Salmons  for  me,  thank  you." 

*'  Woa,  easy,  easy ! "  said  Lord  Bosket  in  the  caressing 
voice  he  used  to  his  alarmed  young  horses  when  they 
pricked  up  their  ears  and  began  to  prance  at  the  auto- 
mobile. "  Easy,  my  boy.  Everybody's  got  to  have  a  be- 
ginning; even  you  had  to  have  a  beginning.  If  a  horse 
is  a  pretty  good  goer,  and  he  don't  shirk  his  fences,  there 
is  no  need  to  worry  about  the  stud-book.     Take  my  word 


6o  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

for  it,  Salmon's  all  right.     Tm  goin'  on  the  Board  myself." 

"  Charles,  I  forbid  you  absolutely  to  do  anything  of  the 
kind,"  said  Lady  Bosket. 

"Jane,"  said  Broke,  "that  man  must  not  come  here. 
Better  not  know  him." 

His  tone  was  so  oddly  yet  unconsciously  like  that  of  his 
sister-in-law  that  his  wife  laughed. 

"  Really,"  said  she,  "  I  think  Charles  and  I  are  both  old 
enough  to  take  care  of  ourselves." 

"  Edmund,  I  hear  you  are  giving  up  Broke  Street,"  said 
Lady  Bosket. 

"  Your  information  is  correct,  Emma.  I  placed  the 
house  in  the  hands  of  Breffit  this  morning.  It  will  pres- 
ently pass  to  those  of  his  son  or  this  fellow  Salmon.  I 
wonder  what  my  poor  dear  father  would  have  said  had  he 
lived  to  see  it.     Thank  God  he  did  not !  " 

"  So  at  last  you  submit  to  the  inevitable,"  said  his  sister- 
in-law,  without  a  spark  of  pity,  notwithstanding  that 
Broke's  tone  of  contempt  was  plainly  intended  to  cover 
his  distress.  "  Of  course,  it  ought  to  have  been  given  up 
years  ago.  It  is  incredible  to  me  that  people  in  your  cir- 
cumstances should  have  kept  it  on  so  long." 

"  You  forget  the  girls,  my  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Broke  mildly. 
She  was  too  well  used  to  her  sister-in-law's  love  of  hector- 
ing her  poor  relations  to  resent  speeches  of  this  kind. 
"  The  girls  had  to  come  out  you  know." 

"  One  fails  to  see  that  their  London  seasons  have  helped 
them.  They  would  have  done  just  as  well  to  stay  in  the 
country  along  with  the  horse-flesh  and  save  the  pence  of 
their  parents.  It  seems  a  mere  waste  of  money  for  coun- 
try girls  to  have  a  season  in  London  unless  they  are  clever, 
or  rich,  or  pretty." 

"  Dash  it  all,  you  would  have  'em  presented,  wouldn't 
you ! "  cried  Broke,  with  vehemence.  Now  that  he  was 
so  down  on  his  luck  he  didn't  mind  how  much  the  great 
lady  rode  the  high  horse  over  him,  but  she  had  to  be  care- 
ful how  she  disparaged  his  girls. 

"  Is  it  necessary  for  the  daughters  of  people  as  poor  as 
you   are   to  be  presented,   Edmund?    One   would   have 


A  HERO  AND  A  HEROINE  6i 

thought  that  if  they  learnt  nursing  or  gardening  or  house- 
hold management  that  might  be  more  to  the  purpose." 

''  Not  be  presented,  Emma !  I  never  heard  such  a  thing 
in  my  life !  I'm  rather  down  on  my  luck  I  know,  but  it  is 
not  going  to  be  said  of  my  girls  that  they  have  not  been 
presented." 

"  The  disgrace  would  not  be  indelible." 

"  That  is  a  matter  of  opinion,  Emma,  if — ah  you  will 
allow  me  to  say  so." 

There  was  an  odd  light  in  the  eye  of  Broke  that  his 
sister-in-law  had  not  seen  there  before.  His  face  too  was 
remarkably  red.  But  that  of  his  wife,  for  some  reason 
was  dissolved  in  laughter. 

"  Are  they  all  out  now  ?  "  asked  Lady  Bosket. 

"  Delia  is  not,"  said  Mrs.  Broke.  "  I  am  sure  I  don't 
know  what  is  to  be  done  with  her,  poor  child.  Perhaps 
the  Gaddesdens  will  have  her  just  for  May  and  the  draw- 
ing-room.    Their  youngest  girl  is  coming  out  too." 

"  Those  people !  "  said  Lady  Bosket.  "  Jane,  you  amaze 
one.  Don't  you  know  they  are  in  with  the  people  who 
put  advertisements  of  their  doings  in  the  illustrated 
papers  ?  " 

"  Beggars  cannot  choose,  my  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Broke, 
with  admirable  meekness. 

"  Well,  rather  than  that  should  happen  che  had  better 
come  to  Grosvenor  Street  to  me." 

"  How  good  of  you,  my  dear !  " 

"  Hold  up  your  head,  child." 

Lady  Bosket  raised  her  glasses  and  looked  at  her  young- 
est niece  with  a  directness  that  Delia  found  to  be  em- 
barrassing. 

She  was  so  much  timider,  so  much  more  delicately  con- 
stituted than  her  sisters. 

"  Rather  nice  eyes,"  said  her  aunt.  "  But  she  blushes  a 
g^eat  deal  too  much.  The  Broke  nose  is  not  quite  so 
much  in  evidence  as  in  the  others,  but  still  there  is  more 
than  enough  of  it.  Edmund,  I  always  say  that  the  Broke 
nose  is  the  ugliest  thing  that  was  ever  borne  about  by  a 
human  being.     I  rather  like  the  child's  mouth;  the  upper 


62  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

lip  is  quite  effective.  Really,  the  family  plainness  is  less 
aggressive  than  usual.  Probably  a  little  deficient  in  char- 
acter. But,  Jane,  her  clothes!  The  cut  of  that  coat! 
Why  Tmll  you  not  send  them  to  Redf  ern,  my  dear  ?  " 

Lady  Bosket  lowered  her  glasses. 

"If  the  child  comes  to  me,  I  make  one  condition — I  shall 
have  her  educated." 

"  Pray  do  as  you  choose,  Emma,  provided  you  pay  the 
piper." 

"  Very  well,  as  I  have  not  a  girl  of  my  own  she  shall  be 
taken  in  hand.  It  will  be  a  luxury  to  have  a  niece  who  is 
able  to  distinguish  between  the  differential  calculus  and 
the  tail  of  a  horse.     She  shall  go  to  Newnham." 

"  The  wretched  child  would  never  be  able  to  pass  the 
preliminary  examination,"  said  her  mother,  laughing. 

"  That  can  be  remedied,  my  dear.  She  shall  have  a 
coach.  By  the  way,  I  know  of  quite  a  deserving  person 
who  has  done  very  well  at  Cambridge;  a  man  from  this 
neighbourhood,  who  in  a  sense  I  regard  as  a  protege  of 
my  own.  He  was  in  the  bookshop  at  Cuttisham,  and  it 
was  on  my  advice  that  he  went  to  the  university.  I  hear 
he  has  done  remarkably  well." 

"  Rather  young  for  the — ah  post,  Emma  ?  "  said  her 
brother-in-law  without  enthusiasm.  "  Must  be  quite  a 
young  chap." 

"  Old  enough,  Edmund,  to  teach  elementary  mathe- 
matics. And  to  my  mind  it  is  a  distinct  advantage  that 
he  is  not  a  gentleman." 

"  This  optimism  is  unlike  you,  my  dear,"  said  Mrs. 
Broke,  with  a  stealthy  air. 

"  I  wouldn't  be  too  sure  about  that,  Emma,  if  I  were 
you,"  said  Broke,  with  a  grim  chuckle.  "  You  are  never 
safe  in  these  days.  A  man  told  me  the  other  day  that  his 
under-garden er*s  eldest  boy  had  just  been  called  to  the 
Bar.     Fact  is  the  old  distinctions  are  disappearing." 

Mrs.  Broke  gazed  from  her  husband  to  her  sister-in-law 
with  the  look  of  humour  deepening  in  her  face.  She  was 
still  regarding  the  unconscious  pair  when  the  butler  came 
into  the  room.    He  bent  over  her  chair. 


A  HERO  AND  A  HEROINE  63 

"  Lord  Salmon,  ma'am,  to  see  you." 

Broke  cocked  his  ears. 

"  We  can't  have  him  here,  Jane,"  he  said  shortly. 

Mrs.  Broke's  look  of  humour  grew  very  broad  indeed. 

"  On  the  contrary,  I  want  to  see  him  particularly ;  and 
I  want  you,  my  dear,  particularly  to  see  him  too.  Show 
his  lordship  in  here  please,  Porson." 

A  somewhat  arid  pause  heralded  the  expected  arrival  of 
the  visitor.  Broke  glared  stonily  and  his  sister-in-law  was 
able  to  say  before  the  door  opened  again :  "  Jane,  on  no 
account  introduce  him." 

Mrs.  Broke  sat  the  picture  of  demure  mischief,  which 
yielded  to  effusive  welcome  at  the  announcement  of  the 
distinguished  visitor. 


CHAPTER  VII 

LE   NOUVEAU    REGIME 

SAUL,  first  baron  of  his  name,  had  a  type  of  counte- 
nance likely  to  excite  racial  prejudice.  Also  he  was 
fat  to  the  verge  of  the  obscene.  His  portrait  in  the  news- 
papers inferred  a  composite  photograph  of  M.  Dumas  the 
Elder  and  the  Tichborne  Claimant.  His  hair  was  black 
and  curly,  his  mouth  was  large  and  coarse,  his  prominent 
eyes  were  yellow. 

When  this  personage  entered  the  room,  Mrs.  Broke  gave 
him  a  hand  of  quite  peculiar  grace.  However,  such  a 
reception  was  a  little  discounted  by  the  coldness  of  her 
husband's  nod,  and  by  the  fact  that  Lady  Bosket  appeared 
to  be  wholly  unconscious  of  his  arrival.  Her  spouse, 
however,  waved  his  hand  in  a  fraternal  salutation. 

"  How  are  you.  Bos  ?  "  said  Lord  Salmon. 

"  How  do.  Fishy ! "  said  Lord  Bosket  reciprocally,  lift- 
ing his  glass.     "  Chin,  chin !  " 

In  the  meantime  Mrs.  Broke,  with  that  almost  cynical 
supineness  she  could  display  when  she  had  a  purpose  to 
serve  by  it,  was  prevailing  very  winningly  upon  Lord 
Salmon  to  sit  down  to  luncheon. 

"  You  must  please  forgive  us,  Lord  Salmon,"  she  said, 
in  a  tone  that  was  very  like  flattery,  "  if  we  should  seem 
a  little  peremptory.  The  fact  is.  Lady  Bosket  and  I  are 
due  at  Cuttisham  Town  Hall  at  a  quarter  to  three,  to  at- 
tend a  meeting  of  the  Temperance  Society." 

"  I'm  goin'  too,"  said  Lord  Bosket.  "  Drink  is  the  curse 
of  this  country.     We  must  put  it  down." 

"  Don't  mention  it,"  said  Lord  Salmon.  "  Temperance. 
Excellent  thing.     Like  a  cheque?" 

64 


LE  NOUVEAU  REGIME  65 

"  My  dear  Lord  Salmon,"  said  Mrs.  Broke.  "  Indeed, 
I  can  say  of  my  own  knowledge  it  is  a  very  well  adminis- 
tered and  thoroughly  deserving  charity.  Really,  my  dear 
Lord  Salmon " 

"  Don't  mention  it,  ma'am.     Fix  the  amount." 

"A  hundred  guineas ?"     Mrs.  Broke  beamed  upon 

the  eminent  financier. 

"  Make  it  two,  ma'am,  make  it  two ;  it's  all  the  same  to 
me.     I  spend  fifty  thousand  a  year  on  advertisement." 

"  Well,  my  dear  Lord  Salmon,  if  you  positively  in- 
sist  " 

Lord  Salmon's  first  act  upon  sitting  down  at  the  table 
was  to  produce  a  cheque-book  and  a  fountain-pen  from 
the  breast-pocket  of  his  coat,  and  to  draw  a  cheque  for 
the  sum  in  question.  While  this  operation  was  being  per- 
formed, Broke  and  Lady  Bosket  gazed  piteously  at  one 
another  across  the  white  expanse  of  table-cloth,  somewhat 
in  the  manner  of  two  belated  missionaries  who,  by  stress 
of  circumstances,  are  compelled  to  sit  down  among  canni- 
bals and  take  a  little  something  to  eat. 

When  Lord  Salmon  had  written  the  cheque,  he  looked 
up  to  encounter  the  arctic  glance  of  Lady  Bosket.  Her 
glasses  stuck  out  rigidly  in  front  of  her.  She  was  engaged 
in  the  Amazonian  feat  of  looking  straight  through  him. 
But  the  Titan  of  commerce,  the  audacious  and  brilliantly 
successful  man  of  business  is  not  very  easily  disconcerted, 
nor  has  he  much  use  for  the  fine  shades. 

"  Ha !  Lady  Bosket,"  he  said,  with  an  affability  that 
made  the  stately  lady  draw  in  her  breath,  "  delighted ! 
Know  you  by  reputation,  of  course.  Ennobling  work  that 
last  of  yours.  Lady  Salmon's  charmed.  That's  not  idle 
flattery  I  assure  you ;  very  sincere  woman  my  wife.  She 
is  very  anxious  to  know  you ;  very  disappointed  you  don't 
call  on  her.  You've  a  friend  in  Lady  S.  Why  don't  you 
come  and  see  us?  Only  too  delighted  to  see  you  at  Top- 
lands  any  time.  Bring  Bos.  Know  Bos  very  well,  of 
course ;  old  pals,  aren't  we,  old  son  ?  " 

At  this  point  Lady  Bosket  turned  to  the  butler. 

"  Porson,  my  carriage." 


66  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

The  majestic  woman  rose,  and  without  a  word  or  a  look 
to  the  right  or  to  the  left,  marched  out  of  the  room.  Her 
glasses  were  borne  rigidly  before  her  as  a  sacred  emblem 
is  borne  before  a  deity.  A  silence  that  could  be  felt  pre- 
vailed round  the  luncheon-table,  while  carriage  wheels 
were  heard  to  approach  on  the  gravel  of  the  drive,  and 
presently  were  heard  dramatically  to  die  away. 

As  the  noise  of  wheels  receded  slowly  up  the  avenue. 
Lord  Bosket  lifted  his  head  to  listen.  He  drew  a  deep 
breath. 

"  That's  all  right,"  he  said.  "  No  foolin'  around  in  the 
paddock  this  time.     Porson,  the  whisky." 

He  then  turned  to  Lord  Salmon.  As  usual  he  was  pre- 
pared to  apologise  humbly  lest  anybody's  feelings  should 
be  hurt. 

"  You  mustn't  mind  the  Missis,  Fishy.  It's  only  her 
fun.  The  papers  are  backin'  her  for  the  Immortal  stakes 
on  the  strength  of  this  new  book.  If  only  she'd  run  'em 
now  there  might  be  a  chance  for  a  poor  old  perisher  like 
me.  By  the  way,  Fishy,  the  stable  tells  me  that  Swin- 
burne II  is  a  certainty  for  the  March  Handicap.  I've  got 
a  bit  on  both  ways  myself." 

Lord  Salmon  wrote  the  name  of  the  horse  in  his  pocket- 
book. 

"  Right  you  are,  Bos,"  he  said,  "  and  here's  something 
for  you.  Bull  California  Canned  Pears  and  Iridiscent 
Soap  Bubbles,  and  bear  Mars  and  Jupiter  Rails." 

It  was  now  the  turn  of  Lord  Bosket's  pocket-book  to 
appear;  Mrs.  Broke  also  produced  memoranda  of  her 
own.  Her  brother's  "  dead  certainties "  sometimes  had 
the  disconcerting  habit  of  culminating  in  a  non-starter; 
but  "  inside  information  "  from  a  prince  among  company 
promoters  was  a  horse  of  another  colour. 

In  the  meantime  Broke  had  not  favoured  his  guest  with 
a  word.  Long  ago  he  had  made  up  his  mind  about  him 
with  the  judicial  deliberation  upon  which  he  prided  him*- 
self.  Salmon  struck  to  the  roots  of  his  faith.  What 
would  become  of  the  world  if  one  of  this  kidney  bounded 
imprudently,  like  a  harlequin  from  heaven  knew  where, 


LE  NOUVEAU  REGIME  (>y 

into  the  middle  of  the  social  order.  That  fellow  Glad- 
stone, with  his  franchises  and  universal  suffrages  had 
something  to  answer  for.  Here,  in  the  person  of  this 
man  Salmon,  was  the  plain  answer  to  the  fanatics  who  put 
political  power  into  the  hands  of  the  democracy.  The 
sight  of  this  Jew  ruffling  it  in  a  Radical  coronet  made  his 
gorge  rise.  They  couldn't  even  respect  the  sanctity  of 
the  peerage.  You  could  see  by  the  way  the  fellow  flaunted 
his  cheque-book  that  he  felt  that  money  was  the  master 
of  the  world. 

Mrs.  Broke,  although  she  was  able  to  read  her  husband's 
prejudices  like  the  page  of  a  book,  was  as  bold  as  she  was 
shrewd.  Therefore  she  did  not  swerve  an  inch  from  the 
course  upon  which  she  was  set.  She  informed  Lord  Sal- 
mon that  Broke  had  accepted  a  seat  on  the  board  of  the 
Thames  Valley  Goldfields  Syndicate. 

My  lord  rubbed  his  hands. 

"  Capital ! "  he  said.  *'  Felt  sure  you  would,  my  dear 
Broke.  Fact  is,  you  get  something  for  nothing,  and  even 
the  aristocracy  don't  object  to  that — what?  Wonderful 
qualities — eh  in  filthy  lucre?  I  could  have  put  lots  of 
my  friends,  in  of  course;  but  now  I've  my  stake  in  the 
country  and  a  seat  in  the  Lords  I  must  look  after  my 
order.  It  seems  a  pity  that  people  like  you,  who  have 
done  so  much  for  the  country,  should  have  to  go  to  the 
wall.  Besides,  we  want  you.  Broke.  You  put  on  the 
brake  when  those  fools  at  Westminster  have  lost  control 
of  the  steering-gear  and  we  are  coming  downhill  a  purler. 

"  Now  I've  staked  out  a  pretty  big  claim  in  this  island ; 
and  in  giving  you  a  leg  up  I'm  looking  after  myself.  Peo- 
ple say  I'm  a  philanthropist.  May  be;  but  I  don't  lay 
down  a  penny  unless  I  see  a  chance  of  taking  up  twopence 
in  exchange  for  it.  It  pays  to  be  frank  in  these  days. 
There  are  too  many  simpering,  self-righteous  fools  tip- 
toeing about  the  earth  pretending  to  be  "  pi "  for  that  sort 
of  stunt  to  be  reaping  a  very  rich  harvest  just  now. 
Pharisaism  is  played  out.  But  this  is  talk,  and  I  have  to 
catch  the  three-twenty  to  town.  You  don't  fancy  me  at 
present,  Broke,  but  you'll  take  to  me  better  in  time.    A 


68  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

fair  chance  is  all  I  ask,  and  Vm  sure  you'll  be  the  first 
to  own  that  there  is  something  in  the  new  order  after  all. 
For  I  like  you,  Broke;  we  must  keep  your  breed  alive  in 
the  country.  And  I'm  going  to  make  it  my  business  to  see 
that  we  do.  Good-bye.  I  hope,  ma'am,  you  will  call  on 
Lady  S.     She'll  be  charmed." 

Lord  Salmon  rose  as  he  ended  his  speech.  Having 
shaken  hands  with  his  hostess,  he  bade  adieu  to  everybody 
else  with  a  cordial  wave  of  the  hand  and  made  his  way  out 
of  the  room. 

"  Rum  beggar,"  reflected  Lord  Bosket  as  soon  as  the 
door  had  closed.  "  But  he's  a  sportsman  from  his  head 
to  his  hocks.  And  he  talks  sense.  Don't  be  so  damned 
uppish,  Edmund,  but  give  him  a  chance.  Feller's  genuine. 
I've  seen  worse  than  that  fat  feller — ^lots!  What's  your 
opinion,  Jane?" 

Mrs.  Broke  declined  laughingly  to  be  drawn. 

Luncheon  over,  she  announced  her  intention  of  setting 
forth  to  Cuttisham  Town  Hall,  in  the  wake  of  the  out- 
raged Emma. 

"  Charles,  you  are  coming,  of  course.  You  have  prom- 
ised to  support  Emma  on  the  platform  you  know." 

"  Oh,  go  hon ! "  said  her  brother,  leering  at  the  glass  in 
his  hand  in  the  manner  of  a  music-hall  comedian.  '*  I 
should  look  well  stuck  up  on  a  pedestal  among  sky-pilots 
and  devil-dodgers,  shouldn't  I  ?  It's  a  thousand  to  five  the 
Missis  would  give  'em  the  tip,  and  they'd  put  up  a  prayer 
for  me." 

"  But  you  promised  to  support  her." 

"  She'll  be  able  to  support  herself  all  right ;  she's  got  a 
bit  of  steam  to  work  off  over  this  job,  poor  old  gal.  She'll 
give  it  tongue  this  afternoon.  Her  speech  is  typewritten 
very  nicely.  It  has  already  opened  two  bazaars  and  laid 
a  foundation  stone  and  launched  a  battleship,  to  say 
nothing  of  bun-worries  and  Sunday  School  treats.  Funny 
idea  some  people  have  of  a  treat.  Not  but  what  she  is 
not  clever  you  know  in  her  way — devilish  clever.  You 
can't  help  admiring  the  old  gal.  The  critics  say  her  new 
book  is  quite  equal  to  Shakespeare." 


LE  NOUVEAU  REGIME  69 

Mrs.  Broke  deemed  it  wise  to  set  out  alone,  leaving  her 
brother  in  the  care  of  her  husband.  After  smoking  their 
cigars  they  went  for  a  walk  round  the  farm. 

The  day  being  wet,  the  girls  spent  the  afternoon  in  the 
room  dedicated  to  their  use.  They  called  it  their  "  den." 
The  name  was  not  inappropriate,  for  had  it  been  in  the 
occupation  of  the  brute  creation  its  disorder  could  hardly 
have  been  worse.  This  temple  of  Diana  was  strewn  with 
every  kind  of  gear.  Boots,  coats,  and  hats;  whips  and 
spurs ;  gloves  and  stirrup-leathers ;  saddles  and  stray  pieces 
of  harness,  and  odds  and  ends  of  every  conceivable  sort 
were  tumbled  in  heaps  all  over  the  room.  There  were 
pumps  for  bicycle  tyres;  skates,  hockey-sticks,  and  leg- 
guards;  guns  and  cartridges;  walking-sticks  and  fishing- 
rods,  reels,  flies  and  tackle;  in  fact  almost  every  weapon 
that  becomes  the  hand  of  woman. 

The  walls  of  their  domain  were  furnished  with  prints  of 
a  pronounced  sporting  character,  and  with  the  masks  and 
brushes  of  defunct  foxes.  These  were  very  numerous 
and  very  dusty,  and  they  clustered  so  thickly  all  over  the 
place  that  they  made  it  look  like  a  furrier's  shop. 

Under  each  of  these  trophies  a  label  was  affixed,  bearing 
in  a  carefully  executed  juvenile  handwriting  the  date, 
where  found,  the  place  of  the  kill,  and  the  precise  length 
of  time  in  which  the  run  was  accomplished.  Over  the 
fire-place  were  pictures  of  their  father  in  pink,  mounted 
on  Merry-andrew ;  of  the  meet  of  the  hounds  on  the  lawn 
of  their  residence,  with  Joan  quite  a  grown-up  young  lady 
on  a  cob,  and  Harriet  and  Philippa  looking  rather  silly  on 
ponies,  with  their  hair  down  their  backs;  while  a  third 
was  a  framed  list  of  subscribers  to  the  testimonial  to 
E.  W.  A.  C.  B.  Broke  Esq.,  m.f.h.,  m.p.,  d.l.,  j.p.,  which 
took  the  form  of  a  service  of  plate,  and  a  salad-bowl  for 
Mrs.  Broke,  on  the  occasion  of  his  relinquishing  the  mas- 
tership of  the  East  Parkshire  Hounds. 

There  were  also  various  portraits  of  their  Uncle  Charles. 
One  was  a  picture  in  colours  from  a  paper  called  "  Vanity 
Fair,"  with  the  name  of  "  Spy  "  in  the  corner,  in  which 
their  uncle  appeared  in  full  fig,  with  a  horn  and  a  very 


70  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

long  whip  under  his  arm  and  a  distinctly  red  nose,  with 
his  hands  thrust  deep  in  his  pockets  and  just  that  kind- 
hearted  querulous  look  about  him  that  they  knew  and 
loved  so  well.  And  although  the  artist  had  drawn  him 
such  a  funny  shape,  and  painted  his  nose  redder  than  it 
really  was,  somehow  it  was  for  all  the  world  like  him,  sur- 
rounded by  hounds,  with  his  legs  straddled  apart  very 
wide,  and  hounds  in  between  them,  one  of  which  they 
were  certain  was  meant  for  "  Halcyon  "  and  another  for 
"  Harmony."  This  cherished  picture  was  entitled  **  Bos." 
Then  there  was  another,  a  more  formal  sort  of  likeness. 
It  was  hardly  so  amusing  and  so  true  to  life  as  the  coloured 
one,  which  almost  had  the  power  to  make  you  laugh  and 
cry.  In  fact  this  was  not  a  bit  like  him  really,  he  looked 
much  too  fine.  It  was  from  The  British  Sportsman  and 
was  called  "  The  Master  of  the  Parkshire." 

Immediately  below  these  pictures  of  their  Uncle  Charles 
they  had  nailed  a  whole  page  torn  from  a  weekly  journal. 
It  was  of  a  recent  date,  and  was  a  vigorously  written  arti- 
cle called  "  The  Trick  Exposed."  It  criticized  their  Aunt 
Emma  and  her  writings  in  a  very  frank  and  contemptuous 
spirit.  It  said  there  was  not  a  single  thought  in  all  the 
writings  of  her  ladyship  which  did  not  come  of  a  very  old 
family.  It  further  said  there  was  not  a  single  thought  in 
her  writings  that  had  not  been  better  expressed  by  people 
nearly  as  well  connected.  It  said  the  severe  refinement  of 
her  style  might  have  incurred  the  danger  of  being  mistaken 
for  a  colourless  nakedness  had  it  not  worn  a  coronet  to 
cover  its  poverty.  That  was  only  one  of  the  clever,  witty 
things  it  said.  There  were  places  where  it  was  flippant  to 
their  aunt;  places  where  it  chaffed  her;  places  where  it 
said  all  her  pretension  could  not  save  her  from  the  cate- 
gory of  Mrs.  This  and  Miss  That,  and  the  army  of  matrons 
and  spinsters,  who,  instead  of  writing  with  the  vulgar 
pen  and  ink  of  common  people,  wrote  with  singleness  of 
aim  and  loftiness  of  purpose.  Like  those  good  ladies, 
said  this  wicked  newspaper,  she  would  be  doing  more  for 
the  amelioration  of  mankind  if  she  would  lay  down  her 
pen  and  take  to   darning  her  husband's   socks.     Fancy 


LE  NOUVEAU  REGIME  71 

Aunt  Emma  darning  Uncle  Charles's  socks!  They  had 
drawn  a  double  line  in  red  ink  under  that.  They  were 
sure  the  writer  must  have  known  Aunt  Emma  personally 
to  have  got  in  such  a  splendid  stroke.  And  the  review 
concluded  in  these  words :  "  So  long  as  to  be  dull  is  to  be 
respectable,  so  long  as  a  solemn  decorum  in  art  and  life 
passes  for  wisdom  and  mastery,  so  long  as  narrowness 
passes  for  strength,  sterility  of  soul  for  refinement  of  emo- 
tion, vacancy  of  mind  for  a  hyper-culture,  so  long  as  we 
are  content  to  worship  at  the  shrine  of  Mediocrity,  how- 
ever flat,  stale,  and  unprofitable  it  may  be,  so  long  must 
we  endure  the  standards  set  up  by  the  Lady  Boskets  in 
the  world  of  taste;  and  not  only  in  art  but  in  life  itself 
we  must  suffer  an  ideal  which  has  always  proved  accept- 
able to  the  provincial  temper  of  the  British  nation." 

Although  the  Miss  Brokes  were  much  too  honest  to 
pretend  to  understand  the  full  meaning  of  this  wonderful 
criticism,  they  had  wit  enough  to  know  that  it  must  be  fine 
because  when  Joan  read  it  out  aloud  in  her  strong  and 
clear  voice  it  sounded  beautiful ;  also  they  knew  it  must  be 
true  because  every  word  was  strongly  against  Aunt  Emma. 

There  was  no  signature  attached  to  this  piece  of  admired 
prose,  however. 

Again  and  again  had  Lady  Bosket's  nieces  read  that 
scathing  criticism.  They  would  turn  to  it  for  solace  when 
newly  from  under  the  lash  of  her  contempt.  When  it  had 
left  them  bleeding,  they  would  turn  to  it  and  with  a  keener 
zest  go  over  every  familiar  line  once  more.  Somehow  on 
those  occasions  it  seemed  to  do  them  good.  Or  if  their 
Uncle  Charles,  the  dearest,  kindest  uncle  in  the  world,  was 
more  depressed  and  drank  a  little  more  whisky  than  usual, 
they  would  read  it  to  avenge  his  wrongs.  Joan,  Roman- 
hearted  Joan — Joan  of  Arc — was  the  special  name  her 
sisters  had  given  her,  so  hugely  was  she  admired  for  her 
high  and  inflexible  spirit — ^Joan  made  it  her  boast  that  she 
knew  every  word  of  it  by  heart,  and  at  a  moment*s  notice 
could  repeat  it  all,  right  through  from  the  beginning. 

This  afternoon  they  had  a  painful  duty  to  perform. 
Whenever  the  great  authoress  published  a  new  work  it 


y2  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

was  her  custom  to  carry  a  copy  to  Covenden  to  improve 
the  minds  of  her  nieces.  It  is  true  a  doubt  always  accom- 
panied the  Grecian  gift;  a  doubt  whether  the  pious  object 
she  had  in  view  would  be  achieved.  "  I  don't  suppose  you 
will  read  it,"  Aunt  Emma  would  say,  "  but  at  least  an 
effort  must  be  made  to  rescue  your  minds  from  their  de- 
based environment."  They  were  not  at  all  clear  about  the 
meaning  of  the  word  **  environment,"  but  they  were  sure 
that  no  compliment  was  meant. 

With  a  solemnity  equal  to  the  gift  itself,  her  nieces, 
without  a  glance  at  the  latest  offspring  of  the  gifted  lady's 
muse,  would  take  steps  to  be  rid  of  it.  They  would  burn 
the  offending  tome  in  the  uncompromising  manner  that 
heretics  were  burnt  of  old.  No  victim  of  an  auto-da-fe 
ever  received  his  doom  with  a  more  ruthless  gusto  on  the 
part  of  his  executioners. 

That  morning  Lady  Bosket  had  presented  them  with 
the  latest  volume  of  her  precious  imaginings,  humbly  en- 
titled, Weeds  in  the  Grass.  She  did  not  mean  it,  of  course. 
But  did  it  not  savour  of  a  delicate  piquancy  that  the  world- 
famous  authoress  of  Poses  in  the  Opaque  should  choose  so 
lowly  a  name  for  any  child  of  her  intellect?  Critical 
journals  remarked  upon  it  with  a  pleasant  unanimity,  and 
chided  her  tenderly  for  such  a  delightfully  obvious  decep- 
tion. 

It  was  printed  on  parchment  and  bound  in  white  vellum. 
It  was  dedicated  "  To  my  Husband."  Critical  journals 
remarked  upon  the  essential  simplicity  of  this  lady,  whose 
distinguished  fate  had  not  divorced  her  from  a  sense  of 
the  sacred  nature  of  motherhood  and  wifeliness.  She  was 
devoutly  domestic  before  the  world.  Critical  journals  re- 
marked on  that  also,  and  pointed  the  moral  for  the  more 
emancipated  members  of  the  sisterhood  who  went  about 
with  shrieks  and  battle  cries,  brandishing  their  pens  and 
flinging  ink.  If  she,  a  lady  of  unfaltering  ideals  and 
impeccable  distinction  did  not  hold  the  first  and  highest 
duties  of  her  sex  to  scorn,  was  it  too  much  to  ask  an  alike 
humility  of  them? 

Alas !  that  a  flower  so  fair  should  be  called  to  suffer  so 


LE  NOUVEAU  REGIME  73 

gross  an  indignity!  No  licentious  print,  no  volume  of 
sedition  was  committed  more  impressively  to  the  flames  of 
yore  by  the  common  hangman.  In  a  group  around  it  stood 
five  of  the  executioners,  whilst  Joan,  the  sixth,  suspended 
the  offensive  work  in  a  pair  of  tongs  by  one  of  its  virgin 
boards  of  white  vellum.  Candour  and  respect  for  the 
character  of  the  authoress  compel  the  admission  that  the 
tone  of  the  martyr-volume  was  so  blameless  that  it  was  fit 
to  be  read  any  Sunday  by  any  clergyman  throughout  the 
land  in  the  bosom  of  his  family.  But  the  most  spotless 
virtue  never  had  a  pennyworth  of  weight  with  fanaticism. 
That  which  could  not  avail  La  Pucelle  and  Dame  Alice 
Lisle  was  powerless  to  defend  even  the  pure  and  modest 
muse  of  Lady  Bosket.  One  by  one,  in  regular  rotation 
and  perfect  order,  the  executioners  circled,  each  in  her 
turn  plucking  out  a  leaf  and  committing  it  incontinently 
to  the  fire ;  and  in  the  act  they  pronounced  the  incantation : 
"  There,  Aunt  Emma,  this  is  what  we  think  of  your  horrid 
book!" 


CHAPTER  VIII 

ENTER   THE  TRUE   PRINCE 

A  FEW  days  later,  about  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning 
Broke  was  riding  to  the  meet  of  the  East  Parkshire 
Hounds.  He  was  accompanied  by  his  retinue  of  daugh- 
ters, Joan,  Harriet,  and  Margaret,  whose  privilege  it  was 
that  day  to  be  mounted  in  the  traditional  manner,  with 
Philippa  and  Jane  bringing  up  the  rear,  as  became  their 
humbler  state,  on  bicycles.  The  gallant  company  had 
come  to  the  porter's  lodge  which  kept  the  gates  of  their 
demesne,  when  they  came  face  to  face  with  a  rather  insig- 
nificant-looking young  man  in  a  blue  melton  overcoat. 

The  first  fact  pertaining  to  the  young  man's  appearance 
that  struck  rather  distressingly  acute  feminine  observation 
was,  that  the  overcoat  was  old,  and  that  the  velvet  collar 
that  had  been  formerly  an  ornament  thereto  had  now 
ceased  to  act  in  that  capacity.  He  was  a  pale  young  man, 
decidedly  under  the  middle  height,  with  a  head  inclined 
to  droop  and  rather  too  large  for  his  body.  Indeed,  he 
wore  an  air  of  perplexity  as  though  he  was  grappling  con- 
stantly with  the  problem  of  how  to  bear  about  such  a  very 
big  thing  on  such  an  inadequate  vehicle.  His  shoulders, 
too,  which  had  a  bunched  and  rounded  look,  seemed  to  be 
burdened  with  the  same  responsibility.  He  was  wearing 
a  bowler  hat  that  was  a  little  battered  and  almost  green 
with  age;  and  in  its  relations  with  his  head  it  seemed  to 
share  the  disabilities  of  his  person.  It  had  the  look  of  a 
cockle-shell  jauntily  poised  on  his  thick  brown  poll,  and  at 
first  sight  it  lent  a  suggestion  of  latent  sauciness  which  if 
you  happened  to  catch  it  at  the  proper  angle  was  really 
quite  funny. 

Still,  in  point  of  fact,  there  was  an  almost  pathetic  ab- 

74 


ENTER  THE  TRUE  PRINCE  75 

sence  of  distinction  about  the  young  man's  clothes  and  the 
way  he  wore  them  which  would  not  have  caused  Broke 
and  his  attendant  Dianas  to  bestow  a  second  glance  upon 
him  had  he  not  stopped  and  held  the  gate  for  them  so 
that  they  might  pass  through.  He  then  raised  his  hat  with 
a  diffidence  the  reverse  of  the  fashionable  and  went  his 
way. 

As  the  cavalcade  passed  on,  a  single  grim  thought  sud- 
denly swept  right  through  it. 

So  this  was  Aunt  Emma's  emissary!  Poor  Delia! 
Poor  little  kid !  It  had  become  almost  a  proverb  that  she 
was  born  unlucky.  All  the  disagreeable  things  seemed  to 
fall  to  her.  The  tutor  realized  to  the  full  the  picture  al- 
ready born  in  their  imaginations. 

The  subject  of  their  reflections  had  in  the  meantime 
passed  on  towards  the  house.  Presently  he  was  face  to 
face  with  the  imposing  doors  of  their  dwelling.  An  august 
old  personage  in  a  starched  front  and  a  swallow-tail  ad- 
mitted him.  Subtle  and  indefinite  signs  seemed  to  indi- 
cate that  the  young  man's  appearance  hardly  recommended 
itself  to  the  austere  custodian  of  the  family  dignity. 

During  the  five  minutes  in  which  the  visitor  was  left 
alone  in  the  drawing-room,  a  cold  and  rather  draughty 
apartment,  he  picked  up  Edward  Fitzgerald's  version  of 
the  Rubaiyat  of  Omar  Khayyam,  which  was  lying  on  a 
table.  Presently  he  was  startled  by  a  creak  of  skirts.  He 
lifted  his  eyes  to  discover  that  a  woman  had  entered  the 
room.  She  was  a  red-faced,  large-featured,  rather  coun- 
trified-looking woman,  who  might  not  have  appeared  out 
of  place  had  she  been  keeping  a  stall  in  Cuttisham  market. 
The  instant  the  young  man  lifted  his  eyes  and  beheld  her, 
her  face  melted  in  a  bright  smile. 

**  Even  you,  Mr.  Porter,*'  she  said,  with  an  easy  prompti- 
tude, as  though  they  were  very  old  friends,  "  can  bring 
your  mind  to  these  elegant  trifles.  I  shall  not  be  quite  so 
much  afraid  of  you  now.  I  was  trembling  lest  one  of  your 
attainments  and  an  unlearned  woman  like  myself  should 
have  no  common  ground  on  which  to  meet.  You  see,  my 
sister-in-law  has  frightened  me  with  your  reputation." 


^6  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

The  young  man  returned  the  smile  frankly,  and  shook 
the  gracious  hand. 

"  You  have  come  from  Cuttisham,"  said  Mrs.  Broke. 
"  I  fear  it  is  a  long  journey.  But  perhaps  you  have  a 
bicycle,  or  you  ride  ?  " 

"  I  prefer  to  walk,'*  said  the  young  man.  "  It  is  not 
more  than  four  miles.'* 

"  That  is  eight  here  and  home  again.  It  seems  a  very 
long  walk." 

*'  Walking  does  one  such  a  lot  of  good."  The  young 
man  spoke  almost  apologetically. 

"  Without  a  doubt  you  are  right,  but  I  must  prevail  upon 
you  to  have  some  little  refreshment  after  such  exertion. 
A  biscuit  and  a  whisky  and  soda  ?  A  glass  of  sherry  and 
a  piece  of  cake?" 

The  young  man  was  proof  against  these  alluring  things ; 
but  when  he  was  conducted,  presently,  by  Mrs.  Broke  to 
the  library  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  his  pupil,  he  was 
in  danger  of  becoming  her  friend  for  life.  The  quarter 
of  an  hour  he  had  spent  with  this  singularly  agreeable 
woman  was  an  experience.  She  was  so  solicitous  for 
one's  welfare,  although  she  could  hardly  have  known  of 
one's  existence  and  had  never  set  eyes  on  one  before !  It 
was  as  though  this  gracious  matron  with  her  dazzling 
smile  and  her  beautiful  voice  was  making  love  to  one  all 
the  time. 

There  was  a  bright  fire  on  the  wide  hearth  of  the  library 
and  a  small  brown,  rather  plaintive  little  figure  was  seated 
at  a  table  before  it.  A  sad  little  figure.  There  were  sev- 
eral ominous  blots  drying  on  a  page  of  Euclid's  Second 
Book,  which  was  open  in  front  of  her.  Haloes  of  faint 
red  shone  round  her  eyes  in  the  glow  of  the  firelight. 
When  the  door  opened  and  her  mother  appeared  in  the 
company  of  a  person  at  whom  Delia  hardly  dared  to  look, 
she  flushed  and  rose  timidly. 

"This  IS  your  pupil,  Mr,  Porter,"  said  her  mother  in 
her  tone  of  ultra-graciousness. 

The  young  man  bowed.  Delia  returned  the  bow  with  a 
feeling  of  bewilderment.    Almost  in  the  act,  the  thought 


ENTER  THE  TRUE  PRINCE  ^y 

flashed  through  her  mind  that  this  was  the  ugliest  and 
oddest  young  man  she  had  ever  seen. 

When  presently  her  mother  withdrew,  poor  Delia  made 
no  effort  to  dissemble  her  sense  of  persecution. 

"  I  have  made  up  my  mind  to  hate  you,  Mr.  Porter," 
she  said,  with  a  deliberation  under  which  was  her  timidity. 

"  Honesty ! "  said  the  young  man,  with  half  a  smile. 

In  his  eyes  she  was  only  a  little  chit  of  a  thing  with  a 
russet-coloured  face,  nearly  as  plain  and  countrified  as 
her  mother's.  But  it  had  much  greater  naturalness ;  it  had 
none  of  those  ingratiating  tricks  that  wrought  so  subtly 
upon  the  judgment.  This  was  a  face  that  had  a  kind  of 
pathos  in  it;  and  apart  from  a  shyness  that  was  rather 
nice,  it  had  an  air  of  perfect  candour  that  was  charming. 

He  liked  the  way  in  which  she  made  her  uncompromis- 
ing statement.  It  was  a  curiously  imperious  little  way, 
which  yet  seemed  quite  properly  to  be  hers  for  all  her  shy- 
ness ;  it  was  almost  something  you  might  associate  with  a 
fairy  or  a  small  princess  of  a  reigning  house. 

"  Alas !  you  have  made  up  your  mind  to  hate  me,"  he 
said.    "  Ruthless,  feminine  justice,  but  very  right." 

The  young  man's  laugh  was  not  at  all  unpleasant,  but 
Delia  met  it  with  resolute  eyes. 

"  I  don't  think  I  blame  you,"  she  said,  with  a  fine  little 
air  of  justice. 

"  You  hate  me,  which  is  worse." 

She  still  refused  to  relent,  although  his  laugh  did  not 
jar  upon  her  at  all.  In  fact  it  was  rather  nice  to  hear 
him  laugh. 

'*  I  cannot  help  hating  you,"  she  said. 

**  Well,  Miss  Broke,  I  respect  your  candour." 

"  It  is  horrid  of  me,  but  I  cannot  help  speaking  as — as 
I  feel." 

"  Alas ! "  he  said,  "  when  I  met  your  sisters  at  the  gate 
laughing  and  talking  so  gaily,  I  felt  I  should  not  be  for- 
given." 

"  I  will  certainly  not  forgive  you." 

The  decision  seemed  to  please  him. 

Delia  clutched  her  book  of  Euclid,  and  tried  to  squeeze 


78  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

the  sudden  tears  back  into  her  eyes.  A  fat  one,  however, 
stole  forward  on  to  the  apple-coloured  cheek. 

"Alas!" 

The  young  man's  sigh  was  as  whimsical  as  his  face. 

"  I — I  think  you  laugh  at  me.     Please  do  not." 

"  On  the  contrary,  I  would  like  to  be  sympathetic." 

**  Please  do  not — please  do  not  be  sympathetic." 

"  I  exceed  my  duties  ?  " 

"  Indeed,  yes." 

"  Then  what,  pray,  is  to  become  of  my  mission?  With- 
out he  is  allowed  to  be  sympathetic  I  am  afraid  this  doleful 
clerk  will  never  lead  his  charge  to  the  Mecca  of  the  faith- 
ful fair,  the  portals  of  Newnham  College." 

The  young  man  laughed.  He  opened  a  pair  of  eyes 
that  were  remarkably  deep-set,  and  seemed  to  regard  the 
stain  that  was  slowly  drying  on  the  russet  surface  of  her 
cheek  with  furtive  amusement.  Delia  suddenly  felt  her- 
self to  be  blushing  horribly.  In  about  the  same  instant 
she  felt  they  were  going  to  be  friends.  She  had  already 
been  a  little  astonished  to  find  herself  talking  to  him  so 
easily.  Ever  since  the  fatal  day  her  aunt  had  made  known 
the  resolve  Delia  had  felt  sure  she  would  be  committed  to 
the  tender  mercies  of  some  grievous  pedant.  Her  sisters 
had  declared  it  must  be  so  with  mournful  unanimity ;  her 
mother  had  hinted  it ;  Aunt  Emma  herself  on  the  terrible 
occasion  had  even  drawn  the  portrait  of  that  kind  of  per- 
son. Delia  felt  sure  she  was  going  to  be  crushed  flat 
under  a  very  Juggernaut  of  learning.  But  this  young  man 
did  not  seem  in  the  least  formidable.  To  be  sure,  he  was 
not  very  prepossessing  to  look  at ;  indeed,  the  first  glimpse 
Delia  had  had  of  him  almost  caused  her  to  shiver  at  his 
ugliness ;  but  now  that  she  had  overcome  this  first  impres- 
sion he  had  lost  something  of  this  look  of  the  grotesque. 
And  when  he  talked  he  was  quite  nice. 

She  didn't  know  what  to  make  of  his  face.  Somehow 
it  was  an  odd,  queer  kind  of  face;  and  now  and  then  she 
stole  covert  glances  at  it  because  it  puzzled  her  consider- 
ably. And  when  those  eyes  that  were  like  liquid  fire 
opened  at  her  and  gave  her  that  grave  smile  she  had  a 


ENTER  THE  TRUE  PRINCE  79 

sudden  sensation  of  being  taken  out  of  her  depth  alto- 
gether. He  was  no  longer  ugly  when  he  smiled,  but  even 
then  the  latent  sombreness  was  not  dispelled.  His  face 
was  worn  and  pale ;  there  were  lines  on  the  forehead ;  and 
the  prominence  of  the  cheek-bones  and  the  attenuation  of 
the  flesh  gave  a  kind  of  mountain  and  valley  effect  to  the 
upper  part  of  his  countenance  in  conjunction  with  the 
lower.  His  lean  jaws  curved  in  the  shape  of  a  hatchet; 
his  eyes  were  large  and  melancholy,  of  a  brooding  grey, 
set  very  deep,  with  a  rather  disconcerting  but  not  unpleas- 
ant habit,  as  she  had  already  discovered,  of  coming  wide 
open  at  you  suddenly.  His  forehead  came  forth  boldly, 
an  uncompromising  dome,  his  brows  were  strongly  marked, 
and  when  he  was  silent  the  curves  of  his  lips  sealed  his 
mouth  so  close  that  it  was  hard  to  know  how  ever  they 
were  going  to  spring  apart.  His  expression  was  hard  to 
describe,  yet  it  needed  but  a  little  to  become  austere  and 
even  slightly  frightening.  That  was  singular  because  his 
voice  was  so  different.  It  was  a  low,  gentle,  beguiling 
voice,  not  in  the  least  harsh  or  displeasing,  as  you  would 
think  it  must  be;  and  it  had  already  done  something  to 
reconcile  her  to  her  tragic  fate  that  she  could  actually  sit 
and  listen  to  it  without  any  feeling  of  antagonism. 

"  Would  you  say,  Miss  Broke,  that  a  book  was  worse 
than  a  poacher  ?  '* 

"  There  are  books  that  I  love,"  said  Delia,  with  a  meas- 
ure of  hesitation  and  then  a  springing  light  in  her  blue 
eyes. 

"  But  not  in  the  way  you  love  hunting?" 

"  Yes,  the  books  I  mean.  I  love  them  quite  as  much,  or 
— or  more,  I  think." 

"  I  am  so  glad." 

"  Why  are  you  glad,  Mr.  Porter  ?  " 

"  Well,  you  see,  Miss  Broke,  if  you  had  no  love  for 
books  you  would  find  my  presence  intolerable." 

"  Yes,  I  should." 

The  young  man  could  not  repress  a  smile  at  the  deliber- 
ate syllables  of  her  candour.  It  was  only  a  furtive  one, 
but  in  an  instant  crimson  flowed  across  her  face. 


8o  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  I  beg  your  pardon ;  I  have  been  horribly  rude." 

**  My  dear  Miss  Broke,  pray  forgive  me  for  teasing  you. 
Really,  I  think  we  are  going  to  get  on  most  tremendously 
well." 

"  You  are  going  to  be  very  kind  to  me,  and  I  am  going 
to  try  awfully  hard  not  to  be  stupid."  Delia's  gracious- 
ness  was  born  of  his  demeanour;  he  was  not  consciously 
the  courtier,  but  his  air  was  charmingly  conciliatory. 

"  I  am  sure  you  could  never  be  stupid." 

*^  Please  don't  expect  too  much  of  me ;  I  am  dreadfully 
dull  at  learning  things." 

"  Do  you  think  we  might  begin  by  your  telling  me  the 
names  of  your  favourite  books  ?  " 

Delia  hesitated ;  and  when  her  tutor  looked  at  her  in  the 
particular  way  that  she  had  already  found  disconcerting 
she  coloured  with  embarrassment. 

"  A  guilty  secret,"  he  said  beguilingly. 

"  They  are  not  at  all  what  I  ought  to  read,  I  know. 
They  are  poetry  and  novels,  I  am  afraid." 

"  Why  is  the  illicit  so  delectable !  You  owe  allegiance 
to  the  reigning  monarchs,  I  presume  ?  " 

"  I  have  only  one  favourite  among  the  writers  of  the 
present  day,"  said  Delia. 

"  Won't  you  tell  me  the  name  of  the  author  ?  " 

"  George  Meredith,"  said  Delia,  colouring  again. 

*'  Do  you  find  him  easy  to  understand  ?  " 

"  I  can  understand  all  the  best  parts,  I  think." 

"  And  you  skip  the  others  ?  " 

"  I  am  not  in  the  habit  of  skipping." 

"  Miss  Broke,  I  apologise ;  the  suggestion  was  unworthy. 
But  tell  me,  do  you  prefer  his  poetry  or  his  novels  ?  " 

"  There  is  poetry  I  love  more  than  his ;  but  I  adore  Nevil 
Beauchamp  and  Richard  Feverel." 

"Which  of  his  heroines  would  you  choose  to  be? 
Renee?  Clara  Middleton?  If  I  were  a  woman  I  think  I 
should  want  to  be  Clara,  just  as  being  a  man  I  want  to  be 
her  hero." 

"  If  I  could  be  a  heroine  out  of  a  story,  I  think  I  would 
choose  to  be  Diana  Vernon." 


ENTER  THE  TRUE  PRINCE       8i 

"  Yes,  I  daresay  she  was  rather  better  to  hounds,  but  I 
doubt  whether  she  could  run  like  Clara.  And  Clara's  wit 
was  perhaps  just  a  little  more  polished,  don't  you  think? 
Not  that  this  is  a  quality  to  count  in  a  lady  in  a  tale,  or  in 
real  life  for  that  matter.  But  somehow  I  can't  bring 
myself  to  admit  that  any  heroine  is  quite  so  delightful  as 
Clara." 

*'  But  I  am  sure,  Mr.  Porter,  that  Diana  had  the  grander 
character.  She  always  reminds  me  of  my  sister  Joan. 
She  has  a  grand  character." 

"  Anyhow,  the  great  Sir  Walter  is  another  of  your 
friends?" 

"  I  am  afraid  I  worship  him." 

"And  the  poets?" 

"  I  think  I  love  them  all." 

"  By  Jove,  yes !  "  The  young  man  suddenly  threw  out 
his  hands  with  a  kind  of  shout  that  quite  startled  Delia. 
She  was  unprepared  for  any  such  outbreak.  "  Yes,  by 
Jove,  it's  right  not  to  compare  them ! " 

"  You  love  them  too,"  said  Delia,  with  a  sudden  delicious 
thrill. 

"  Aye — ^yes."  The  eyes  of  liquid  fire  sprang  open  again. 
"  Aye — yes,  I  love  them  too." 

"  Oh,  that's  splendid !  "  Delia  could  not  hold  back  her 
enthusiasm.  "  You  see  those  rows  of  brown  dusty  old 
volumes  on  the  shelves,  those  right  at  the  top  " — an  excited 
hand  was  waved  in  their  direction — "  every  one  of  those 
are  dear,  beautiful  old  poets." 

"  Is  Dan  Chaucer  there  ?  " 

*'  Yes,  he's  there." 

"And — no,  no,  we  mustn't.  Safer  to  go  back  to  the 
prose  men,  I  think."  The  young  man's  laugh  was  really 
the  most  charming  thing  Delia  had  ever  heard.  "  Miss 
Broke,  I  hope  you  love  poor  dear  old  Don  Quixote." 

"  Indeed,  yes,"  said  Miss  Broke,  with  great  simplicity. 
"  I  just  worship  Don  Quixote.  Do  you  know,  Mr.  Porter, 
he  somehow  always  makes  me  think  of  my  father." 

"  Your  father  did  not  appear  to  be  mounted  on  Rozi- 
nante  when  I  saw  him  this  morning.    There  was  rather 


82  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

a  Bertrand  du  Guesclin  look  about  him.     But  it  is  my 

duty  to  insist  that  you  worship  Robinson  Crusoe/' 
"  Yes,  indeed,  and  Treasure  Island  too,  and  the  Three 

Musketeers/' 

"  And  Pilgrim's  Progress  and  Sir  Thomas  Mallory  ?  " 

*'  Oh,  yes,  and  Jane  Austen  and  Charles  Lamb." 

"  And  of  course.  Miss  Broke,  the  author  of  Weeds  in 

the  Grass f  "  said  the  young  man  demurely. 


CHAPTER  IX 

STARTLING  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE   HEROINE 

TUTOR  and  pupil  suddenly  caught  themselves  smil- 
ing. 

"  Is  it  my  duty  to  admire  herf  "  said  Delia  gravely. 

"  Your  critical  judgment  fits  you  to  answer  the  ques- 
tion for  yourself." 

Her  sigh  of  relief  was  so  deep  that  he  turned  his  laugh 
upon  the  little  lady. 

"  Splendid !  *'  he  said.  "  I  recognize  the  spirit  of  no- 
compromise — the  spirit  that  enabled  those  ancestors  of 
}^ours  to  bleed  for  their  opinions." 

"  I  suppose  it  is  all  very  wrong  and  very  wicked,  but 
that  is  how  I  feel,"  said  Delia. 

Something  flashed  so  vividly  out  of  the  child's  eyes,  that 
for  the  first  time  he  felt  their  quality.  Rather  wonderful 
eyes  they  were;  not  arresting  perhaps  to  a  cursory  look, 
but  once  you  had  seen  them  you  wanted  to  see  them  again. 
Blue  was  their  colour :  blue  as  the  ocean  sky ;  blue  calling 
for  a  noble  simile  if  you  chanced  to  catch  them  in  a  mo- 
ment, to  surprise  that  which  slept  beneath  the  veil  that 
kept  their  mysteries.  The  flash  had  revealed  her.  Look- 
ing through  it,  with  those  wonderful  eyes  of  his,  he  saw 
she  was  an  exquisite  little  creature  in  her  way.  Although 
even  as  he  came  to  this  fact  he  felt  that  you  had  to  see 
deep  to  know  that. 

"  You  love  poetry.     I  know  you  do !  " 

"  How  do  you  know  ?  " 

"  It  is  in  your  face  and  your  voice  when  you  speak 
about  it.  It  is  delicious  to  be  able  to  talk  of  it  just  as  one 
feels.  That  is,  if  I  may;  you  will  allow  me,  will  you 
not?*' 

83 


84  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  I  would  rather  talk  of  poetry  to  the  people  who  under- 
stand it  than  do  anything  else  in  the  world." 
"  The  people  who  understand  it !  " 
"  Well,  suppose  you  allow  me  to  choose  one  of  them." 
Delia  still  felt  just  a  little  nervous.  Somehow  she 
feared  him  just  a  little,  for  all  that  his  friendliness  and 
enthusiasm  were  so  disarming.  And  yet  he  was  easier  to 
talk  to  than  any  one  she  had  ever  known.  With  her 
father,  her  sisters,  her  Uncle  Charles,  all  of  whom  were 
her  boon  companions,  and  of  whom  she  was  no  more 
afraid  than  they  were  of  her,  she  had  never  found  herself 
talking  so  pleasantly,  so  copiously,  with  so  little  difficulty 
in  expressing  her  thoughts,  and  with  so  many  thoughts 
surging  to  be  expressed.  She  was  more  afraid,  in  a 
different  way,  of  this  new  strange  friend  of  hers  than  she 
was  of  her  mother  or  her  Aunt  Emma.  He  gave  her, 
even  when  he  tried  to  make  it  less,  a  far  keener  sense  of 
her  limitations  than  did  they,  although  so  often  it  had 
seemed  to  her  that  that  was  an  effect  they  were  always 
striving  to  create.  But  this  man  was  different  altogether ; 
he  had  what  she  could  only  call  "  a  something  else."  Be- 
hind those  deep-seeing  eyes,  that  seemed  to  go  right  into 
your  heart,  behind  that  gentle  and  beguiling  speech  lurked 
a  power  that  had  a  more  subtle  fascination  than  anything 
she  had  ever  known. 

"  I  know  I  shall  bore  you  terribly,"  she  said,  "  but  you 
don't  know  how  I  long  to  talk  to  you.  All  my  sisters 
despise  books;  and  even  my  mother  is  not  a  lover  of 
poetry." 

"  That  is  surprising ! "    The  young  man  permitted  him- 
self an  arch  smile. 
"  She  says  a  love  of  poetry  is  really  a  disease." 
"  In  its  relation  to  the  scientific  and  the  useful  ?  " 
"  And  yet,  she  is,  oh,  so  dreadfully  clever !  " 
"  My   prophetic   soul !     Suppose   we   say  her  idea   of 
literature  is  something  that  will  pass  examinations,  or  put 
meat  in  the  pot  or  coals  on  the  fire?    Well,  Miss  Broke, 
it  happens  that  the  terms  of  my  mission  render  it  neces- 


STARTLING  DEVELOPMENT  OF  HEROINE     85 

sary  that  I  shall  regard  it  in  that  light  myself,  at  the  rate 
of  five  shillings  an  hour." 

"  Yes,  but  as  we  know  what  it  is  really  we  shall  only  be 
playing  a  game,  shall  we  not  ?  When  we  study  philosophy 
we  shall  be  able  to  make  it  seem  like  poetry." 

''  So  we  shall !  " 

"  You  are  going  to  give  me  the  keys  to  those  wonderful 
things  I  cannot  understand.  You  will  unlock  the  doors  of 
meaning,  so  that  I  may  read  words  which  are  like  wonder- 
ful music,  so  that  I  may  read  the  poetry  which  haunts 
you  all  night  and  every  night  like  the  voices  in  the  trees." 

Delia  bent  forward  eagerly  with  her  hands  locked  round 
her  knees,  and  as  she  did  so  the  sudden  tears  sprang  into 
her  eyes. 

"  A  spark  of  the  sacred  fire !  " 

"  Please  you  will  not  laugh  at  me !  " 

"  It  would  be  a  sacrilege.  Is  it  not  the  stuff  of  which 
poetry  is  made?  In  the  day  of  the  common  danger  or  the 
common  wrong  did  it  not  emit  the  native  woodnotes  wild 
of  which  we  tame  twentieth-century  people  are  the  in- 
heritors ?  Has  your  race  ever  had  a  poet,  Miss  Broke  ?  I 
cannot  recall  one." 

"  There  is  a  Lady  Margaret  Broke  who  composed  a 
Book  of  Hours  in  the  reign  of  Edward  the  Third.  I  do 
not  think  you  would  call  it  very  fine  poetry." 

"  May  I  ask  if  Miss  Delia  Broke  has  made  the  attempt 
to  remove  the  stigma  of  poetical  sterility  from  her 
family?" 

"  No — yes— that  is,  at  least !  " 

He  regarded  the  tokens  of  her  too  vivid  embarrassment 
with  a  pretence  of  gravity.  Even  as  she  struggled  against 
it  she  felt  how  impossible  it  was  to  keep  her  secret.  She 
would  not  confess  her  guilt,  but  her  silence  made  it  plain. 

*'  Since  when  have  you  been  a  poet  ?  " 

Never  before  had  she  made  such  a  confession ;  and  with 
that  dread  of  criticism  those  of  her  kind  are  apt  to  feel, 
it  had  seemed  impossible  to  tell  her  secret.  But  the  mur- 
der was  out  now. 


86  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  Won't  you  let  me  see  your  poetry  ?  " 

"  No— no,  I  cannot !  "  said  Delia,  a  little  wildly.  "  It 
— it  is  not  meant  to  be  seen." 

"  Are  you  quite,  quite  sure  ?  " 

"  I  am  quite  sure !  " 

"  Reflect  a  little.  Think  out  exactly  how  you  feel  about 
it.  I  know  a  little  myself  of  the  inmost  feelings  of 
authors." 

"  I  am  quite  sure !  " 

*'  The  inmost  feelings  of  authors  are  woefully  complex." 

"  Indeed,  I  am  quite  sure  my  wretched  writings  were 
never  intended  for  you  to  read." 

"  Reflect  a  moment  longer.  The  whole  truth  is  worth  a 
struggle." 

"  They  would  make  you  despise  me  dreadfully." 

"  In  your  heart  you  are  not  so  sure." 

"  Oh,  how  can  you  know  that ! " 

"  I  know  it  only  too  well.  Nature  is  careful  of  the 
type,  you  see ;  we  are  all  alike,  we  authors.  We,  you  and 
I,  Miss  Delia  Broke  and  Mr.  Alfred  Porter,  write  to  be 
read  as  much  as  ever  Virgil  and  Milton  did." 

Delia  began  to  waver.  After  all,  there  was  something 
rather  uncompromising  in  those  beguiling  eyes. 

"Suppose  you  fetch  them  for  me  to  see?"  In  such  a 
persuasiveness  there  was  somehow  no  margin  for  refusal. 

"  Oh,  I  could  not,  indeed  I  could  not ! "  cried  poor 
Delia. 

"  A  poet  must  not  be  afraid,  you  know.  He  is  the 
sword-bearer  of  truth,  he  is  the  prophet  of  beauty.  We 
poets  must  always  have  the  courage  of  our  nobility. 
Noblesse  oblige,  you  know.  Miss  Broke — that's  the  great- 
est motto  in  the  world,  to  my  mind.  We  poets  must  be 
proud  to  endure  the  carpings  of  fools,  and  the  censure  of 
those  whose  wisdom  is  beyond  our  own." 

"  But  I  am  not  a  poet ;  Indeed,  I  do  not  pretend  to  be  a 
poet,"  said  Delia,  taking  fright  at  this  austerity. 

"  Nothing  can  save  you  from  the  charge.  You  have 
committed  your  thoughts  to  paper  In  the  choicest  form  at 
your  command.     I  hope  you  do  not  wish  a  humble  fellow 


STARTLING  DEVELOPMENT  OF  HEROINE     87 

of  your  craft  to  believe  that  you  have  not  wrought  the 
best  that  is  in  you." 

"  I  was  very  much  in  earnest  when  I  wrote  them.  But 
I  feel  how  poor  they  must  be." 

"  Would  you  have  kept  them  had  you  really  felt  that  ?  " 

"  Indeed,  I  do  feel  it ;  I  do  indeed !  " 

"  You  think  like  that  towards  them  sometimes,  but  at 
other  times  you  think  quite  differently  about  them.  Let 
this  be  one  of  the  '  other  times,'  in  which  they  stand  out 
in  all  their  radiance." 

Delia  was  beginning  to  know  already  her  impotence 
before  him.  She  had  denied  the  existence  of  her  writings 
when  he  had  surprised  the  secret  in  her ;  he  had  made  her 
confess  that  they  were  composed  for  a  public,  had  she  only 
had  the  courage  to  commit  them  to  it ;  and  now,  in  spite  of 
all  she  could  do,  he  was  about  to  compel  her  to  yield  them 
to  the  light  of  day.  It  was  as  though  a  new  force  had 
caught  her.  There  was  not  a  loophole  by  which  he  al- 
lowed her  to  escape  the  consequences  of  her  deeds.  The 
thoughts  she  had  ventured  to  put  upon  paper  must  pay  a 
toll  for  her  daring.  His  half -laughing  insistence  caused 
her  to  see  a  kind  of  justice  in  it,  and  presently,  with  many 
misgivings,  she  rose  to  do  his  will. 

While  Delia  went  to  procure  these  first-fruits  of  her 
young  imagination,  her  tutor  turned  his  attention  to  the 
library  shelves.  There  were  few  new  books,  but  some  de- 
lightful old  ones.  It  was  a  collection  that  owed  little  to 
the  present  generation  of  its  owners,  but  was  rather  an 
accretion  of  centuries.  His  eyes  glowed  at  the  sight. 
When  Delia  returned,  bearing  her  treasures  in  her  arms 
like  babes  before  her,  he  had  a  sense  of  happiness  in  store. 
He  saw  the  promise  of  many  Arcadian  hours. 

Delia's  writings  were  calculated  to  exhibit  the  scope  and 
calibre  of  her  mind.  They  comprised  poems,  plays, 
essays,  hymns,  short  stories,  and  fragments  of  several 
novels.  They  were  rolled  into  some  twenty  little  tubes 
of  white  paper,  spotlessly  clean,  and  tied  with  blue  ribbon. 
They  represented  the  activities  of  a  prolific  pen  and  a 
lively   imagination   since  the   age  of  twelve.    With  the 


88  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

critic's  aid  they  were  laid  reverently  side  by  side  upon  the 
table  before  the  fire,  and  were  arranged  like  the  works  of 
Shakespeare  in  the  order  of  their  birth. 

"  Please  do  not  look  at  the  early  ones."  Delia  spoke 
very  earnestly. 

She  had  striven  in  vain  for  a  note  of  gaiety.  The 
tumult  within  was  very  high.  With  a  short  little  laugh 
and  a  rather  high  colour  she  selected  the  first  roll  to  pass 
in  judgment  before  her  critic.  Not  improperly,  it  was  a 
poem  on  a  tragic  theme.  It  was  inspired  by  the  death  of 
Cutlass,  a  gallant  hound,  who,  in  the  performance  of  his 
duties,  had  been  cut  in  pieces  by  the  London  express. 

The  critic  glanced  at  it  with  an  immobility  that  could 
not  be  read,  rolled  it  up  and  replaced  it  without  a  word  of 
comment.  He  then  turned  his  attention  to  prose  and  the 
drama.  These  did  not  draw  a  word  from  him  either. 
He  then  took  up  an  essay ;  it  was  called  "  An  Appreciation 
of  Lord  Tennyson."  This  also  he  read  in  a  silence  as 
complete  as  that  in  which  he  had  read  the  others. 

Delia  watched  this  impassiveness  while  she  tried  not  to 
do  so.  She  strove  very  hard  to  attain  that  stoicism  which 
she  was  sure  her  sister  Joan  would  have  been  able  to  com- 
mand in  these  circumstances.  But  she  felt  ruefully  that 
nature  had  not  fashioned  her  on  a  principle  so  heroic. 
Her  will  was  not  strong  enough ;  her  self-command  almost 
failed  her.  The  silence  of  the  critic  was  a  relief  in  a 
sense,  but  also  it  was  bitterly  disappointing. 

"  And  they — are  they  quite  hopeless  ?  "  she  ventured  to 
ask  at  last,  faintly. 

"  Suppose  we  burn  them  ?  " 

She  recoiled,  aghast.  It  was  like  a  hit  in  the  face. 
Such  a  course  had  never  entered  her  mind.  The  criticism 
she  dreaded  she  had  been  steeling  her  heart  to  bear;  but 
total  annihilation — !  The  twenty  little  rolls  were  dear 
and  faithful  friends  who  had  nourished  her  lonely  spirit 
secretly  when  all  the  world  had  been  unkind. 

"  N — no,  I  could  not  burn  them,"  she  said  in  a  thin  little 
voice. 

Her  tone  caused  the  young  man  to  look  at  her  with 


STARTLING  DEVELOPMENT  OF  HEROINE     89 

something  strange  in  his  eyes.  "  It  may  seem  a  little 
Lcruel,"  he  said,  "  but  that  is  the  only  way  for  the  artist," 

"  I — I  do  not  think  of  myself  as  an  artist  at  all." 

*'  Oh,  but  you  are,"  he  said  with  an  abrupt  frankness 
that  was  like  a  boy's  and  yet  in  reality  was  not  in  the  least 
like  one.     '*  It's  all  there,  you  know." 

"  But  I  am  sure  I  would  prefer  not  to  be  an  artist  and 
be  allowed  to  keep  my  treasures,  than  be  an  artist  and 
have  them  destroyed." 

The  critic  enfolded  her  with  his  charming  melancholy 
smile. 

"  You  are  not  the  one  to  fear  the  sword  and  the  fire. 
Miss  Broke,"  he  said  in  a  voice  that  thrilled  her. 

"  I  am  a  wretched  coward,"  said  Delia  miserably. 
"  Oh,  I  am  sure  I  could  never  consent  to  have  them  burned. 
My  mother  found  them  once  in  their  hiding-place  and  said 
she  would  burn  them,  and  I  passed  a  dreadful  week.  My 
sister  Joan  might  be  able  to  bear  it  if  they  were  hers ;  yes, 
she  would,  for  her  courage  is  so  great;  but  I — I  am  not 
brave  enough." 

"  You  are  no  coward.  Miss  Broke,"  said  the  young  man, 
with  his  wonderful  eyes  sinking  deep  into  hers.  "  And 
think  what  it  means  to  be  an  artist.  The  laurels  are  a 
crown  of  thorns,  but  the  blood  and  tears  we  shed  that  we 
may  bear  it  are  worth  it — are  worth  it  all.  Courage,  Miss 
Broke,  always  courage." 

His  face  was  quite  bewildering  now. 

*'  You  almost  frighten  me,"  said  Delia,  quailing.  "  I — 
I — I  feel  so  mean." 

Again  his  eyes  had  that  look  of  liquid  fire. 

Delia  shivered. 

"  I  am  sure  I  could  not,  I  am  sure  I  could  not,"  she 
cried,  training  a  sidelong  look  upon  her  treasures.  "  Be- 
sides, Mr.  Porter,  was  not  Shakespeare  an  artist,  yet  he 
never  blotted  a  line." 

"  I  would  he  had  blotted  a  thousand.  The  sword  and 
the  fire  are  the  food  of  the  gods." 

"  Oh,  how  terrible,  how  very  terrible !  " 

"  Yes,  but  Art  is  a  terrible  matter.    There  is  no  room 


90  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

for  fear  in  those  who  enter  her  service.  The  artist  must 
toil  early  and  late  with  sinews  of  steel  and  an  inflexible 
courage  in  his  heart,  if  he  is  to  be  fit  to  bear  the  sword 
of  Truth,  the  lamp  of  Beauty.  There  must  be  no  vacilla- 
tion on  the  part  of  those  who  wear  the  gauge  of  the 
Mighty  Mistress.  The  wounds  are  many  and  grievous, 
the  toils  unceasing,  the  pleasures  vague,  the  rewards  are 
mockery,  but  the  humblest  foot-soldier  in  the  ranks  has 
no  thought  for  things  like  these.  He  suffers  great  penal- 
ties and  renounces  the  world  simply  to  say,  *  This  is  me — 
this  is  Truth.     This  is  my  Soul — .     This  is  Beauty.' " 

Delia  regarded  her  tutor  with  grave  bewilderment.  He 
had  spoken  with  the  fervour  of  the  prophet.  There  was 
passion  in  his  voice  and  a  kind  of  exaltation  in  his  face. 
The  strong  was  calling  on  the  weak  to  gird  itself.  Her 
heart  in  its  young  chivalry  leapt  out  to  him,  yet  her  fear 
of  him,  at  first  an  instinct,  was  mounting  to  a  pitch  that 
made  her  tremble. 

"  You  mean  that  we  must  be  true  to  ourselves,"  she 
faltered. 

"  Yes,  but  let  us  do  the  best  that  is  in  us.  Let  it  be 
said  that  we  wrought  as  good  as  we  knew.  It  is  all  that 
we  are  here  for." 

"  You  make  me  feel  how  great  your  ideals  are." 

"And  yours?" 

"  I  do  try  to  have  my  Ideal." 

"  Well,  Miss  Broke,  put  it  into  words  if  you  can." 

"  I  should  like  to  have  a  strong  and  splendid  character 
like  my  sister  Joan." 

"  That's  no  bad  ideal.  Now  I  want  you  to  take  up  the 
last  of  these  things  of  yours  and  read  it  again.  When 
you  have  done  so  I  would  like  to  ask  you  just  a  few  ques- 
tions about  it." 

Obediently,  Delia  took  up  her  most  recent  performance, 
"  A  Ballad  in  Imitation  of  Master  Francis  Villon." 

"  Now,"  said  the  young  man  when  she  had  read  it,  "  do 
you  think  if  you  wrote  it  again  you  could  make  it  better?  " 

"  No,  not  myself  personally.  It  seems  much  nearer 
what  I  meant  than  anything  I  have  tried  to  do  before.     Of 


STARTLING  DEVELOPMENT  OF  HEROINE     91 

course,  a  real  poet  would  be  ashamed  of  it,  but  I  do  not 
feel  I  could  make  it  better  myself." 

"  You  are  quite  clear  upon  the  point  ?  " 

"  Yes,  I  think  I  am,"  said  Delia  nervously. 

"  Well,  now,"  said  the  young  man  in  his  gentle  voice, 
"  that  ballad  tells  me  that  you  did  not  go  to  the  real  Villon, 
but  to  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti.     May  I  ask  why  ?  " 

"  I  cannot  read  Villon  as  well  as  I  can  read  Rossetti." 

"  Yes,  the  mediaeval  French  has  to  be  grappled  with. 
But  now  I  ask  you,  do  you  think  you  could  improve  your 
ballad  if  you  found  the  original  to  be  as  clear  as  the  trans- 
lation of  Rossetti  ?  " 

Delia  did  not  answer  at  first. 

"  Perhaps  I  could  just  a  little  in  some  ways,"  she  con- 
fessed reluctantly. 

"  But  the  old  French  is  very  hard  to  get  on  with  ?  " 

"  Well,  now.  Miss  Broke,  I  ask  you  what  your  sister 
Joan  would  do  in  such  circumstances  ?  " 

"  She  would  never  have  written  it,"  said  Delia  quickly. 
"  Her  tastes  are  not  at  all  in  the  direction  of  poetry." 

"  Ha !  the  eternal  feminine,"  he  said,  laughing.  "  But 
please  assume  that  you  yourself  are  your  sister  Joan. 
Now  tell  me  just  what  you  would  do  in  the  circumstances, 
having  regard  to  your  conception  of  her  character." 

"  Perhaps  I  might  learn  to  read  old  French,"  said  Delia, 
blushing  vividly.  She  had  seen  all  at  once,  with  a  tinge  of 
shame,  where  the  ambush  lay. 

"  And  afterwards,  don't  you  think  you  might  remodel 
your  ballad  by  the  light  of  your  fuller  knowledge?  And 
don't  you  feel  that  possibly  your  imitation  would  be  more 
faithful?" 

Delia  replied  by  placing  her  ballad  in  the  fire. 

"  And  now  the  others — if  you  are  not  afraid  to  apply 
the  same  standard." 

For  the  moment  she  stood  irresolute.  The  conflict  soon 
passed.  Now  the  first  step  was  taken  she  was  too  thor- 
ough-going to  be  content  with  half-measures.  One  by  one 
she  began  to  commit  her  'cherished  manuscripts  to  the 
fire.    To  be  sure,  it  was  a  Spartan  act;  but  she  held  her 


92  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

mouth  tight,  and  kept  the  tears  out  of  her  eyes  somehow, 
and  tried  to  fix  her  mind  firmly  on  her  sister  Joan.  No 
consolation  was  bestowed  upon  her  by  the  instigator  of 
this  inhuman  hardihood.  So  little  sympathy  had  he  for 
the  signal  deed  that  he  even  ventured  to  superintend  its 
execution.  However,  when  he  took  the  rolls  in  his  hands 
with  the  object  of  consigning  them  personally  to  perdition, 
it  was  a  straw  too  much. 

"  Put  them  down,  please,"  she  said  fiercely.  **  I  cannot 
have  you  destroy  them;  I  cannot  have  anybody  destroy 
them  but  myself.  They  are  mine;  I  made  them,  and  I 
will  make  an  end  of  them.  I  must  burn  them  myself, 
please/' 

Tears  were  very  near.  It  is  hard,  even  for  your  Spar- 
tan nature,  to  perform  a  deed  of  the  first  grade  of  heroism, 
and  for  it  to  leave  public  opinion  cold. 

"  Pray  do  not  think  I  underrate  your  courage.  I  am 
not  sure  I  could  have  done  it  myself." 

"  You — you  do  not  know  how  dear  they  are  to  me," 
said  poor  Delia. 

He  shook  his  head  and  smiled  sombrely. 

"  I  would  not  have  asked  you  to  destroy  them  had  I 
not,"  he  said. 

"  I  do  not  know  why  I  am  destroying  them ;  I  am  sure 
I  did  not  mean  to." 

"  Nay,  do  not  look  on  them  as  dead.  They  are  the  seed 
that  in  a  day  shall  raise  the  flower.  Who  can  tell  what 
shall  spring  from  these  balls  of  white  flufif  ?  One  wonders 
how  much  Milton  burnt  when  he  was  young.  Now  sup- 
pose you  do  not  put  pen  to  paper  again  for  a  whole  year  in 
the  way  of  icomposition.  You  shall  read  what  you  choose 
in  the  meantime.  You  have  no  voice  at  present,  it  would 
be  astonishing  if  you  had;  but  give  yourself  up  to  those 
who  have  spoken  greatly  to  the  ages,  and  perhaps  one  day 
you  may  be  of  them.  What  thoughts  they  induce  do  not 
trouble  to  express,  but  let  them  lie  fallow.  And  I  think 
we  bond-slaves  of  Truth — ^yes,  since  you  have  shown  your- 
self capable  of  this  high  devotion  of  a  principle,  I  hail  you 
as  a  fellow-cadet  of  our  service — I  think  we  ought,  in  the 


STARTLING  DEVELOPMENT  OF  HEROINE     93 

first  place,  to  crave  that  sovereign  humility  which  our 
Mistress  imposes  upon  all  before  they  are  allowed  to  see 
her  face." 

The  young  man  concluded  his  exordium  with  a  strange 
light  shining  in  his  eyes.  But  poor  Delia  continued  her 
painful  task,  heeding  not  the  prophet.  By  now  the  tears 
had  gathered,  and  they  remained  in  the  most  persistent 
and  ridiculous  fashion  until  all  the  little  white  rolls  tied 
with  blue  ribbon  had  been  committed  tenderly,  unrelent- 
ingly to  the  flames. 


CHAPTER  X 

CET  ANIMAL   EST   TRES   MECHANT 

DELIA  was  on  her  knees,  pressing  the  last  of  the 
sacred  packets  between  the  bars,  with  tears  still  glis- 
tening in  her  eyes,  at  the  moment  Mrs.  Broke  chose  to 
enter  the  library. 

"  Deep  in  the  mysteries  of  ipsilon  and  upsilon  I  do  not 
doubt,"  said  the  fluent  lady. 

However,  the  attitude  in  which  her  daughter  was  dis- 
covered gave  pause  even  to  her  indomitable  readiness. 

"  Oh,  mother ! "  cried  Delia,  "  I  am  burning  my  manu- 
scripts.*'    Her  voice  was  almost  tragic. 

"  Do  you  mean  those  absurd  things  I  once  found  in  your 
room  ?  " 

Mrs.  Broke  gave  the  tutor  a  smile. 

"  A  most  remarkable  morning's  work,"  she  said. 
"  How  you  have  contrived  it,  Mr.  Porter,  I  don't  know, 
but  I  am  sure  that  I,  personally,  am  very  grateful.  So 
they  are  really  destroyed !  And  may  one  venture  to  hope 
the  folly  is  forsworn  ?  " 

"  For  a  time  at  least,"  said  the  young  man. 

"  Excellent.  I  see  your  tact.  She  is  to  be  cured  by 
degrees.  Really,  Mr.  Porter,  I  congratulate  you  upon 
such  a  beginning.     I  hope  you  will  stay  to  luncheon." 

The  young  man  having  consented,  Mrs.  Broke  led  the 
way  to  the  dining-room.  The  repast  was  frugal ;  but  the 
conversation  of  the  hostess  was  really  very  agreeable. 
Delia,  on  the  other  hand,  did  not  speak  a  word.  The  talk, 
or  more  properly  the  monologue,  for  at  first  the  young 
man's  share  of  it  was  extremely  slight,  hovered  about  the 
topic  of  literature.     He  was  entertained  not  a  little  by  the 

94 


GET  ANIMAL  EST  TR6S  MECHANT         95 

readiness  of  this  woman  of  the  world.  She  was  wonder- 
fully "  sound."  Not  only  was  she  acquainted  with  all  the 
landmarks,  but  her  opinions  coincided  with  accepted  liter- 
ary verdicts  in  the  most  honourable  way. 

"You  are,  of  course,  an  admirer  of  Lady  Bosket?" 

*'  On  the  contrary,  I  cannot  count  myself  as  one  of  the 
elect." 

"  I  beg  your  pardon." 

The  young  man  repeated  his  words  without  the  faintest 
trepidation. 

His  amused  coolness  rather  took  the  fluent  lady  aback. 
It  was  so  unlooked-for.  Yet,  after  all,  such  a  frankness 
had  its  piquancy. 

"  Surely  you  admire  her  Poses f" 

"  I  confess  they  amuse  me  a  little." 

"  May  I  confess,  on  my  own  part,  this  is  the  first  time  I 
have  heard  them  accused  of  being  amusing." 

"  I  gather  that  you  did  not  find  them  so." 

The  woman  of  the  world  recognized  a  certain  deftness 
in  the  touch.  Unfortunately  it  was  only  one  world  she 
belonged  to — "  the  great  world  "  which  in  England  at  any 
rate  is  so  provincial.  All  the  same,  with  so  much  intelli- 
gence she  ought  to  have  been  more  wary. 

"  But  surely,"  she  urged,  "  you  are  not  insensible  to  the 
delicate  tracery  of  her  style,  the  depth  of  her  culture,  the 
width  of  her  outlook?" 

"  Wholly,"  said  the  young  man  with  an  arch  smile. 

"  Can  it  be  a  blind  intolerance  ?  You  have  reasons,  I 
hope?" 

"  I  hope  I  have  not  formed  the  fatal  habit  of  making 
up  my  mind  without  them." 

"  How  one  longs  for  the  privilege  of  hearing  what  they 
are." 

"  I  fear  they  might  seem  technical." 

"  Caviare  to  the  general  in  other  words.  Alas,  Mr. 
Porter,  that  our  sex  should  always  be  handicapped  out  of 
the  game!  I  am  a  mere  woman  without  pretensions  to 
culture  in  any  form,  but  if  you  are  not  afraid  to  pay  me 
the  most  delicate  compliment  in  your  power,  you  will  give 


96  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

me  the  chance  to  forget  my  limitations.  And,  if  I  may 
say  it,  to  neglect  an  opportunity  of  complimenting  a 
woman  on  the  score  of  her  intellect  is  a  little  unkind. 
Flattery  is  very  precious  in  our  eyes." 

The  young  man  was  alert  enough  to  see  that  he  was  in 
imminent  danger  of  crossing  swords.  But  his  was  a  nature 
that  could  not  shirk  a  icontest.  Delia,  on  the  other  side  of 
the  table,  trembled  for  him.  She  had  a  wholesome  dread 
of  her  mother's  powers,  purchased  by  many  a  cutting 
stroke.  Had  she  been  able  to  save  her  friend  from  his 
danger  she  would  have  done  so,  but  tied  by  her  subordinate 
position  she  knew  not  how.  Suddenly,  however,  her  de- 
sire grew  uncontrollable.  She  must  save  him  at  any  cost. 
She  bent  across  the  table,  full  under  the  astonished  eyes 
of  her  mother,  and  said,  "  Please,  please  do  not  argue  the 
point!  You  and  my  mother  do  not — do  not  see  things 
with  the  same  eyes." 

At  once  he  understood  the  chivalrous  solicitude  that 
had  nerved  her  to  this  audacity.  While,  however,  he  was 
smiling  his  gratitude  to  the  little  lady,  her  mother  had 
turned  her  cold  with  a  smile  of  her  own. 

"  Please,  Mr.  Porter,  do  not  humiliate  me  by  withhold- 
ing your  criticism  of  Lady  Bosket.  It  will  be  very  unkind 
not  to  forgive  limitations  for  which  my  unfortunate  sex 
is  to  blame." 

"  Lady  Bosket  and  her  school,"  said  the  young  man 
with  an  air  of  deprecation  as  became  one  striving  to  forget 
the  maxim,  "  Language  was  given  us  to  conceal  our 
thoughts,"  "  are  trying  to  set  up  a  rule  of  thumb,  to  which 
all  writing  is  expected  to  conform.  As  in  the  day  of 
Pope  it  was  the  heroic  couplet  of  five  feet,  so  in  ours  no 
less  is  demanded  of  a  writer  by  Lady  Bosket  and  her 
school  than  that  he  shall  have  the  Conscience  of  a  Noncon- 
formist. The  ideal  Lady  Bosket  has  before  her  is  to  be 
respectable  in  the  Victorian  sense.  She  has  a  mission; 
she  is  the  guardian  of  public  decency.  *  You  may  write 
like   an   angel,   but,'   says   she,   *  beware  of  your  moral 


CET  ANIMAL  EST  TRES  MECHANT         97 

"  Surely  that  is  a  precept  which  can  never  lose  its  sig- 
nificance." 

"  In  art  it  has  no  significance.    Art  is  non-moral." 

"Surely  art  overflows  with  moral  teaching?" 

"  Only  inasmuch  that  it  is  human  endeavour  in  its 
highest  and  most  disinterested  form.  But  your  true 
craftsman  does  not  preoccupy  himself  with  shaking  his 
fist  in  the  faces  of  the  wicked ;  neither  does  he  preoccupy 
himself  with  his  own  integrity.  He  does  not  weave  his 
visions  and  his  meditations  into  patterns  that  dazzle  us 
into  a  blindness  of  dogma.  He  has  no  desire  to  become 
a  shibboleth  of  church  or  chapel  or  the  parish  council. 
He  is  neither  better  nor  worse  than  ourselves;  he  is  one 
of  us ;  he  is  our  brother.  He  holds  the  mirror  up  to  nature 
for  no  conscious  advancement  of  our  immortal  souls,  ex- 
cept in  so  far  as  the  reflection  in  it  of  truth  and  beauty 
may  react  upon  them.  He  paints  his  Madonna  or  carves 
his  Mercury,  or  writes  his  epic  with  fasting  and  with 
prayer,  but  if  you  are  to  look  for  the  moral  teaching  in 
these  works,  do  not  seek  it  in  the  severity  of  their  line, 
but  in  the  austerity  of  the  life  of  him  who  wrought  them." 

"  I  can  say  with  the  deepest  conviction  that  the  life  of 
Lady  Bosket  will  bear  inspection.  It  is  one  of  continued 
saintliness." 

"  One  fears  the  loveliness  of  her  private  character  is 
powerless  to  redeem  the  unseemliness  of  her  works." 

"  I  beg  your  pardon." 

"  The  paradox  is  inevitable.  Lady  Bosket,  in  her  role 
of  self -elected  guardian  of  the  public  morals,  is  an  offence 
to  the  sanctity  of  the  art  she  pretends  to  serve.  Bad  art 
is  the  only  form  of  immorality  known  to  aestheticism. 
Lady  Bosket  is  our  old  friend  Mrs.  Grundy,  in  an  edition 
de  luxe  carefully  revised  and  brought  up  to  date,  with  an 
appendix  of  the  latest  laws  of  literary  decorum  and  de- 
portment." 

"  You  will  admit,  I  hope,  that  there  should  be  some 
standard  of  good  form?" 

"  I  cannot  admit  an  arbitrary  one.     It  ought  not  to  be 


98  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

compulsory,  even  in  England,  to  drape  the  legs  of  one's 
piano.  This  Mrs.  Grundy  of  ours,  this  national  fetish,  is 
as  essentially  vicious  a  person  as  there  is  to  be  found  any- 
where. Hers  is  the  doctrine  of  clothes  with  a  vengeance ; 
God,  nature,  and  art  are  so  obscene  in  themselves  that  not 
for  a  moment  must  they  be  viewed  without  them.  If  she 
visits  a  picture  gallery  the  sight  of  a  marble  upon  which 
Michelangelo  has  forgotten  to  place  a  pair  of  trousers 
quite  spoils  her  day.  One  cannot  help  feeling  how 
ironical  it  is  that  persons  who  do  nothing  but  abuse  it 
should  exploit  this  sacred  gift  of  vision." 

Mrs.  Broke  had  already  begun  to  see  that  she  was  no 
match  for  her  antagonist.  He  did  not  play  the  game  as 
it  was  understood  in  the  drawing-room.  Evidently  he  was 
without  experience  in  that  style  of  combat. 

The  redoubtable  lady  was  piqued.  She  was  not  used  to 
defeat,  at  her  own  table  particularly,  the  place  of  all  others 
where  she  reigned  supreme.  Some  people  might  have 
called  it  courage  on  the  part  of  this  young  man  to  permit 
himself  such  a  swashbuckling  style,  but  her  name  for  it 
was  less  complimentary.  Poor  Delia,  who  had  followed 
the  controversy  with  a  painful  solicitude  for  the  welfare 
of  her  friend,  now  saw  certain  subtle  evidences,  unmis- 
takable none  the  less  to  those  skilled  in  the  signs,  of  her 
mother's  anger.  The  sudden  appearance  of  a  cold  sparkle 
in  those  eyes  made  her  tremble  for  the  young  man,  as  often 
enough  it  had  made  her  tremble  for  her  unfortunate  sis- 
ters and  her  unfortunate  self. 

"  You  astonish  one,"  said  Mrs.  Broke,  lifting  her  mild 
voice  a  little.  "  Your  criticism  is  terribly  scathing,  but 
at  least  it  has  the  rare  merit  of  scandour.  Poor  Lady 
Bosket!" 

"  I  did  not  give  my  opinion  willingly.  Please  remember 
I  was  urged.  I'm  afraid  I'm  rather  reckless  if  I  happen 
to  feel  strongly." 

"  You  are  very  fearless,  certainly." 

"  Stupidly  so,  sometimes.  I  always  avoid  an  argu- 
ment if  I  can,  because  I  can't  help  saying  more  than  I 
ought." 


CET  ANIMAL  EST  Tr6s  MECHANT         99 

In  any  one  else  such  a  frankness  would  have  pleased 
her ;  it  was  so  simple,  so  naive.  But  this  animal  was  very 
bad,  and  she  was  a  woman  playing  for  victory.  Already 
in  her  bones  she  hated  this  underbred  young  upstart,  and 
she  meant  to  punish  him. 

"  I  agree,  Mr.  Porter,  that  your  outspokenness  may  not 
be  without  its  inconvenient  side,"  she  said,  hoisting  her- 
self smoothly  on  the  amende  he  had  offered.  "  May  it 
not  at  times  become  a  little  embarrassing  to  poor  Lady 
Bosket?" 

"  She  has  not  suffered  at  present  under  my  unfortunate 
controversial  method,  I  am  happy  to  say." 

"  After  all,  that  is  not  unnatural.  But  I  would  ask,  does 
it  strike  you  as  quite  politic  that  one  should  hold  these 
views  of  Lady  Bosket  and  her  work?" 

"Politic?" 

There  was  a  sudden  grim  sparkle  in  the  eyes  of  Mrs. 
Broke  when  she  saw  the  quick  lift  of  the  young  man's 
head. 

"  Would  it  not  be  a  little  wounding  to  Lady  Bosket,  if 
it  came  to  her  ears  that  one  in  whom  she  happens  to  take 
a  peculiar  interest  held  such  heretical  opinions  concerning 
her?" 

"  Forgive  me  if  I  venture  to  ask  whether  the  word 
*  politic '  does  not  call  for  a  stronger  qualification." 

"  Is  it  wise  to  insist  upon  a  stronger  one  ?  " 

"  I  gladly  take  the  risk." 

To  Delia's  dismay  that  cold  light  was  ever  growing  in 
her  mother's  eyes. 

"  Have  you  not  in  a  sense  been  '  taken  up  '  by  her  ?  " 

"  Forgive  me  if  I  crave  a  little  more  explicitness." 

"  Is  she  not  in  a  sense  your  patron ;  I  mean,  of  course, 
in  the  way  that  in  happier  days  persons  of  a  pre-eminently 
fortunate  condition  stood  in  that  relation  to  art  and  to 
those  who  practise  it  ?  " 

The  young  man  laughed  imperturbably.  The  time- 
honoured  method  of  hitting  below  the  belt  did  not  hurt 
him  at  all.  He  saw  that  the  redoubtable  lady  had  com- 
pletely lost  her  temper. 


loo  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  I  confess  I  had  not  thought  of  it,"  he  said  cheerfully. 
"  And  I  think  there  is  humour  in  the  idea." 

He  laughed  whole-heartedly. 

Mrs.  Broke  had  no  particular  reason  to  be  solicitous  for 
the  reputation  of  her  sister-in-law,  but  superb  as  was  the 
control  she  knew  how  to  keep  upon  herself,  for  the  mo- 
ment it  was  gone.  She  was  genuinely  angry.  Her  red 
face  had  grown  a  shade  redder;  the  expanse  of  her  smile 
had  grown  a  fraction  more  expansive;  and  the  grim  light 
the  frightened  Delia  had  observed  in  her  eyes  was  now 
burning  more  coldly  and  oddly  than  ever. 

''  I  gather,  Mr.  Porter,  that  you  do  not  find  the  idea 
wholly  devoid  of  amusement  ?  "  she  said,  following  up  in 
her  mellowest  accents.  *'  Still,  I  must  admit  that  I  have 
heard  of  quite  a  number  of  even  literary  persons  who  are 
not  ashamed  of  Lady  Bosket's  friendship." 

"  Please  forgive  me,"  said  the  young  man  with  his 
whole-hearted  laugh.  "  The  idea  is  so  new  to  me.  It  had 
never  occurred  to  me  that  our  few  and  very  formal  rela- 
tions were  in  danger  of  being  construed  in  the  light  of 
patronage." 

"  You  appear  to  repudiate  them." 

"  Not  at  all ;  but  I  am  sincerely  anxious  that  an  exagger- 
ated notion  of  my  status  should  not  get  abroad." 

The  simplicity  of  his  way  of  saying  this  completely 
baffled  his  fair  antagonist.  The  demure  assumption  of  his 
mildness  was  in  nowise  behind  her  own.  And  she  was 
quite  clever  enough  to  know  that  his  was  vastly  the  more 
delicate.  She  was  hitting  below  the  belt,  which  she  knew ; 
but  it  seemed  she  was  not  to  have  it  all  her  own  way. 
Where  a  warrior  of  the  other  sex  would  have  admired  his 
skill  in  the  face  of  a  peculiar  disadvantage,  his  fair  an- 
tagonist deplored  the  fact  that  he  should  defend  himself 
at  all. 

"  As  your  amusement  is  unconquerable,"  she  said,  "  you 
force  one  to  concede  a  reason  for  it.  But  please  let  me 
say  that  in  the  first  instance  I  was  not  conscious  of  having 
provided  it." 


CET  ANIMAL  EST  TRES  MECHANT       loi 

"  Nor,  if  I  may  say  so,  do  I  think  you  are  now.  It  may 
not  seem  obvious  to  everybody,  but  to  me,  I  confess,  it  is 
strikingly  so.  It  is  good,  of  course,  to  enjoy  the  status 
which  the  legend  *  Appointment  by  Royal  Warrant '  con- 
fers upon  the  royal  grocer.  It  is  a  novel  feeling,  but 
doubtless  a  happy  one  when  one  becomes  accustomed  to 
the  glamour." 

Yet  again  the  young  man's  laugh  was  heard,  and  now  its 
note  was  so  robust  that  it  told  the  sharp-witted  lady  that 
she  had  made  rather  a  fool  of  herself.  Not  that  she  could 
ever  have  admitted  it.  But  somehow  she  did  not  feel  she 
had  shone.  She  hastened,  therefore,  with  the  great  mobil- 
ity for  which  the  woman  of  the  world  is  famous,  to  scram- 
ble back  to  the  safer  ground  of  the  influence  of  Beowulf 
on  the  early  Augustine  Fathers. 

She  ;could  not  rid  herself  of  a  dim  feeling  that  for  once, 
with  all  her  social  experience,  she  had  been  led  into  error. 
The  Tact  upon  which  woman  rightly  plumes  herself  had 
been  at  fault.  She  was  not  sure  of  the  direction  in  which 
the  error  lay,  or  exactly  how  it  had  come  to  be  made,  but 
the  uneasy  feeling  remained  to  her  that  things  had  not 
gone  very  well  at  luncheon.  Still  the  solace  was  hers 
that  in  these  uncomfortable  moments  when  one  rubs  shoul- 
ders with  Democracy,  these  little  clashes  are,  after  all,  the 
lustres  in  the  martyr's  crown.  Yes,  there  could  be  no 
doubt  this  was  a  very  rough  diamond.  Still  he  was  what 
he  was — the  son  of  a  Cuttisham  tradesman.  It  was  not 
fair  to  expect  too  much.  She  hoped  piously,  all  the  same, 
that  poor  dear  Edmund  would  not  stumble  across  him. 
If  he  did  the  poor  dear  fellow  would  throw  a  fit! 

When  the  young  man  had  taken  his  leave,  the  ruffled 
lady  spent  some  time  in  meditating  upon  her  course. 
Should  she  write  and  tell  Emma,  or  should  she  not,  of  the 
kind  of  person  her  choice  had  proved  to  be?  Had  she 
consulted  her  private  feelings  she  would  have  sat  down 
there  and  then  and  have  given  him  his  conge.  But  after 
all  there  was  Emma  to  be  considered.  Emma  held  an 
eminent  position  in  the  category  of  those  whom  we  desig- 


102  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

nate  as  "  touchy."  There  was  no  saying  how  she  might 
take  it.  After  the  encomiums  she  had  lavished  on  the 
man  she  might  make  it  a  personal  matter  if  this  particular 
gift-horse  were  looked  in  the  mouth.  And  they  could  by 
no  means  afford  to  quarrel  with  Emma.  Apart  from  per- 
sonal pique,  which  she  was  too  clever  a  woman  not  to  be 
able  to  swallow,  it  really  didn't  matter  who  instructed 
Delia  in  Latin  and  mathematics.  It  would  have  been  more 
agreeable  for  the  child,  certainly,  could  she  have  had  a 
gentleman  to  direct  her  studies,  but  after  all  he  was  not 
going  to  form  her  manners.  Besides,  it  would  do  her  no 
harm  to  endure  a  little  hardship ;  would  it  not  be  in  keep- 
ing with  the  Spartan  tradition  in  which  all  her  girls  had 
been  brought  up.  And  again,  as  Emma  had  said,  with 
surprising  penetration  for  her,  *'  With  a  man  of  that  kind 
there  can  be  no  danger ! " 

The  redoubtable  lady  having  entered  into  the  matter, 
not  without  a  certain  zest  that  a  knotty  question  will  ex- 
cite in  an  energetic  intelligence,  presently  sought  the  help 
of  Delia,  who  was  in  a  position  to  throw  further  light  on 
the  young  man's  betises. 

"  I  am  afraid,  child,  you  found  your  tutor  rather  a  trial. 
Still,  it  is  hardly  wise  to  increase  your  prejudice  against 
him.  For  your  Aunt  Emma's  sake  you  must  have  pa- 
tience ;  although,  I  have  a  great  mind  to  let  her  know  how 
he  speaks  of  her  books,  and  how  he  regards  her  kind- 
nesses towards  him." 

"  What  kindnesses,  mother  ?  "  Delia's  curiosity  enabled 
her  to  ask. 

"  I  am  surprised,  child,  that  you  should  ask  the  ques- 
tion. It  is  wholly  through  your  Aunt  Emma's  interest 
that  he  is  allowed  to  come  here  at  all." 

There  was  something  in  the  voice  that  made  Delia 
shiver.  She  seemed  to  grow  numb  and  a  little  faint;  the 
blood  ran  out  of  her  face  suddenly. 

"  I  don't  think  he  looks  at  it  in  that  light  at  all,  mother," 
she  found  the  courage  to  say.  As  she  spoke  the  blood  ran 
as  suddenly  back  into  her  face,  and  seemed  to  burn  with 
a  heat  intenser  for  its  banishment. 


CET  ANIMAL  EST  TRES  MECHANT       103 

"  One  is  afraid  he  does  not.  It  is  what  one  complains 
of  in  him." 

For  the  life  of  her,  Delia  could  not  see  what  it  was  that 
her  mother  complained  of  in  her  friend.  She  was  aware, 
in  a  vague  way,  that  she  was  very  inexperienced,  but  look 
at  the  matter  as  she  might  she  could  not  tell  in  what  he  had 
offended.  Was  it  his  frank  criticism  of  the  writings  of 
Aunt  Emma?  It  could  hardly  have  been  that,  because 
her  mother  had  insisted  that  he  should  make  it;  and  he 
had  spoken  with  a  conviction  that  was  very  honest.  No, 
she  was  sure  that  there  must  be  some  deeper-seated  reason. 

Before  to-day  Delia  had  only  been  brought  into  intimate 
relation  with  three  men  in  all  her  young  life;  and  they 
were  her  father,  her  brother,  and  her  Uncle  Charles.  She 
had  been  able  to  recognize  certain  fine  attributes  in  each 
of  these  heroes,  but  the  hours  she  had  passed  in  the  library 
with  her  tutor  that  morning  had  far  more  powerfully  af- 
fected with  the  significance  of  the  masculine  character. 

Now  that  they  were  no  longer  face  to  face,  and  she  was 
able  to  view  him  with  detachment,  an  extraordinary  power 
seemed  to  have  been  his.  Without  any  appearance  of 
effort,  without  in  any  way  insisting  on  his  great  reserve 
force,  his  will  had  dominated  hers  completely.  He  had 
wrung  her  secrets  out  of  her,  and  he  had  made  her  obey 
his  wishes,  when  nothing  was  firmer  in  her  than  the  de- 
termination not  to  do  so.  The  episode  of  the  destruction 
of  her  manuscripts  continued  to  bewilder,  to  disconcert 
her. 

In  many  respects  poor  Delia  was  little  more  than  a  child. 
The  accents  of  the  nursery  were  as  yet  hardly  out  of  her 
voice.  But  the  old  eternal  mysteries  lurked  below  that 
shy  personality.  Nebulous  and  fragile  at  present,  tenderly 
vague  and  so  indefinite  that  only  one  pair  of  eyes  had  the 
cunning  to  suspect  its  existence,  it  was  yet  no  light  and 
vapid  spirit  that  brooded  in  those  deep-set  eyes  with  their 
strange  filmy  curtain.  A  soul  was  there  to  surrender;  a 
nature  to  wrench ;  a  heart  to  be  made  to  bleed.  Nothing 
could  have  been  more  inimical  to  her  development  as  a 
member  of  the  community  in  which  she  made  a  unit  than 


104  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

that  at  a  season  so  susceptible  she  should  be  thrown  into 
the  toils  of  a  nature  so  powerful  that  it  might  crush  her  to 
the  dust  without  being  conscious  that  it  touched  her. 

Late  in  the  afternoon  the  Miss  Brokes  returned  from 
hunting  to  find  Delia  curled  up  in  the  recesses  of  the  cosiest 
chair  of  their  common  room.  A  cheerful  fire  was  before 
her,  and  she  was  reading  the  mustiest  old  book  imaginable : 
the  Works  of  Jeremy  Taylor,  d.  d.,  Volume  IV. 


CHAPTER  XI 

IN   THE   TEMPLE  OF   DIANA 

IT  was  their  custom  on  their  return  from  the  field  to 
come  there  in  their  muddy  attire,  and  revive  the  events 
of  the  glorious  day,  while  they  refreshed  their  weariness 
with  weak  tea  and  bread  and  butter  cut  in  very  thick 
slices.  This  afternoon  they  were  in  a  fine  state  of  exalta- 
tion. Their  day  had  been  so  entirely  delightful,  that  after 
some  little  argument,  whereby  they  hoped  their  daring 
would  grow  less,  they  resolved  to  commemorate  the  occa- 
sion by  asking  for  preserve  for  tea. 

The  resolve  itself  was  easy,  but  its  execution  involved 
a  peculiar  hardihood.  Had  it  been  possible  to  make  the 
request  directly  to  the  cook  or  the  housekeeper  it  would 
not  have  been  at  all  a  difficult  matter.  But  it  was  outside 
the  jurisdiction  of  those  functionaries.  Demands  of  that 
kind  had  to  be  made  to  their  mother!  She  it  was  who 
regulated  the  bill  of  fare  on  a  basis  of  rigid  economy. 
And  these  intrepid  sportswomen  had  such  a  wholesome 
awe  of  her  that  in  the  absence  of  volunteers  for  the  heroic 
duty  they  were  fain  to  resort  to  conscription  by  ballot. 
They  wrote  their  names  on  six  tiny  pieces  of  paper,  rolled 
them  up,  and  shook  them  together  in  an  old  boot.  Joan 
then  solemnly  drew  out  one. 

It  bore  the  name  of  Delia.  They  were  almost  certain 
beforehand  that  that  was  the  name  it  would  bear,  since  it 
had  become  a  proverb  among  them  that  Delia  was  very 
unlucky.  For  one  thing  she  had  been  born  on  a  Friday. 
Everything  disagreeable  seemed  to  befall  her  as  if  by  fell 
design.  It  almost  seemed  sometimes  that  a  malevolent 
fairy  had  presided  at  her  birth.  All  the  same  she  was 
promptly  haled  out  of  her  comfortable  chair  and  bidden 

105 


io6  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

to  resign  the  Works  of  Jeremy  Taylor,  d.  d..  Volume  IV, 
to  enter  on  her  diplomatic  mission.  Moreover  she  was  in- 
structed to  remind  their  mother  that  it  was  precisely  two 
months  and  three  days — the  date  was  marked  on  the  cal- 
endar in  sedulous  red  ink — since  their  last  pot  of  preserve 
had  been  allotted,  and  although  it  had  been  only  a  small 
pot  they  had  made  it  last  nearly  a  week. 

Delia,  however,  was  very  soon  back  again.  Her  inter- 
view with  the  powers  had  been  brief  and  to  the  point. 

"  Mother  says  certainly  not.'' 

Accepting  the  decree  with  a  cheerful  readiness  that  went 
to  show  that  it  had  been  anticipated,  their  onslaught  upon 
the  thick  slices  of  bread  and  butter  was  not  lacking  in 
resolution.  They  had  had  a  splendid  day :  had  found  four 
times,  had  killed  three  foxes  and  the  other  had  gone  to 
ground  in  the  Hollow.  They  had  run  from  Bobbet's  Gorse 
to  the  Twelve  Apostles  in  twenty-two  and  a  half  minutes, 
and  Uncle  Charles  had  said  he  would  defy  the  Quorn  to  do 
it  in  less.  They  had  been  in  sight  of  hounds  most  of  the 
time;  all  except  Margaret,  who  was  obliged  to  be  careful 
of  the  Doctor's  off  fore-leg.  In  consequence  she  had  not 
dared  to  put  him  at  that  bullfinch  at  the  bottom  of  Coplaw 
Hill,  the  particularly  beastly  one  with  the  very  bad  take- 
off, and  had  had  to  go  round  by  the  gate.  But  everybody 
else  had  brought  it  off  all  right,  although  Jane,  as  usual, 
had  picked  the  wrong  place — Jane  blushing  vividly — and 
if  Pat  had  not  been  so  clever,  she  must  have  had  him  down. 
Uncle  Charles  said  that,  take  it  altogether,  it  was  one  of 
the  best  days  he  had  had  since  he  had  hunted  the  pack; 
and  he  had  promised  Joan,  Philippa,  and  Harriet  a  brush 
apiece,  although  Hat  might  easily  have  spoilt  everything 
when  she  nearly  let  Whitenose  put  his  foot  on  Madrigal." 

"  I  am  sure  I  did  not,"  said  the  indignant  Harriet. 

'*0h.  Hat!"  cried  the  other  four.  "Why,  Uncle 
Charles  looked  at  you  himself  and  said,  *  Woa  there,  back 
pedal ! ' " 

"  Oh,  you  mean  then,"  said  Harriet,  with  an  air  of  re- 
lief that  was  very  great.  "  That  was  only  because  I  was 
going  out  of  my  turn  through  the  gate.     I  only  squeezed 


IN  THE  TEMPLE  OF  DIANA  107 

in  in  front  of  that  red-headed  young  farmer  on  that  sken 
bald  thing  that  Uncle  Charles  said  had  come  out  of  the 
Ark." 

This  explanation  being  deemed  satisfactory  to  the  Court, 
the  narrative  of  events  resumed  its  harmonious  flow. 
Their  father,  although  riding  Porlock  up  to  fifteen  stone, 
had  led  the  whole  field  at  Mounsey's  Brook,  and  had  cov- 
ered himself  with  honour  by  making  a  successful  cast 
when  hounds  were  at  fault  in  the  Spinney,  Uncle  Charles 
and  "  George  "  being  left  behind  temporarily  in  the  Maze. 
Lord  Croxton  had  taken  a  tremendous  toss  when  his  young 
mare,  the  most  beautiful  chestnut  they  had  ever  seen,  with 
perfect  thoroughbred  shoulders,  had  refused  a  post  and 
rails  in  the  last  field  but  one  on  the  left  going  into  Caisby 
from  High  Moreton.  Uncle  Charles  said  it  would  have 
served  the  beggar  right  if  he  had  broken  his  neck,  because 
he  ought  to  have  known  better  than  to  put  her  at  them 
when  she  was  done,  although  Uncle  Charles  said  you 
could  not  expect  to  find  old  heads  on  young  shoulders  all 
the  same. 

"  It  was  his  second  horse  too,  so  you  will  see  the  sort  of 
day  it  has  been,"  said  Margaret. 

"  It  was  the  last  field  but  two  coming  into  Caisby," 
interposed  Philippa  doggedly  at  this  point.  She  had  an 
air  of  weight  that  showed  she  spoke  upon  mature  consid- 
eration. 

"  One,"  sang  the  other  four. 

"  Two,"  said  Philippa,  more  doggedly  than  ever.  *'  It 
is  the  one  with  the  cow  hovel  in  the  right-hand  corner, 
and  the  row  of  pollard  elms  at  the  top  end  just  as  you 
come  in." 

"  Flipper's  right,"  said  Joan.  "  What  a  stupid  mis- 
take! Of  course,  it  is  the  second:  the  one  that  had  the 
half-bred  two-year-old  in  it,  that  Uncle  Charles  said  was 
only  fit  for  cat's-meat." 

"  So  it  was,"  chimed  in  the  rest.  "  How  stupid  we  are ! 
And  isn't  it  odd  that  Flipper  is  always  absolutely  cor- 
rect?" 

The  edge  being  worn  at  last  ofif  their  own  exploits,  they 


io8  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

were  able  to  extend  a  little  commiseration  to  Delia.  They 
gave  liberally  of  their  sympathy. 

"  Poor  old  Del !  "  they  said.  "  What  a  shame  to  be  left 
out  of  it  Hke  this!  You  have  missed  a  glorious  day,  and 
all  because  it  is  a  fad  of  Aunt  Emma's  to  send  a  perfectly 
awful  young  man  to  teach  you  Latin  and  Greek." 

Delia  blushed  deeply  at  this  reference,  but  they  were  too 
preoccupied  with  bread  and  butter  to  notice  it. 

"He  is  not  perfectly  awful,"  said  Delia. 

*'  Oh,  Del,"  they  said,  "  how  can  you !  We  rather  ad- 
mire you,  of  course,  for  making  the  best  of  your  bad 
luck.  It  is  right  to  make  light  of  a  thing  when  you  can- 
not help  it.     But  he  is  awful,  you  know  he  is." 

"  I  don't,"  said  Delia,  "  and  I  am  sure  you  don't  either." 

"  That  is  just  what  we  do  know,"  they  sang  in  chorus. 
"  We've  seen  him." 

"  He  is  not  awful,"  said  Delia. 

"  Yes,  he  is,  Del,  you  know  he  is !  It  is  brickish  of  you 
and  all  that  to  stick  up  for  him,  but  we  don't  expect  you  to 
do  it  with  us." 

"  He  doesn't  want  any  sticking  up  for." 

"  No,  we  shouldn't  say  he  does.  He  is  the  sort  of  man 
who  would  be  quite  able  to  stick  up  for  himself." 

*'  No,  he  wouldn't,"  said  Delia,  with  a  fierceness  they 
had  never  suspected  in  her.  "  He  is  very  modest  and 
very  kind  and  he  is  awfully  clever  " 

"  What  does  cleverness  matter,  if  he  is  what  Billy  calls 
a 'bounder'?" 

"  He  is  a  gentleman,"  said  Delia. 

"  Why  doesn't  he  brush  his  hat  then  ?  "  said  Philippa. 

"  Why  does  he  wear  such  a  silly  collar  ?  "  said  Jane. 

"  Why  does  he  wear  such  a  wretched  old  slovenly  tie  ?  '* 
said  Harriet. 

"  Why  are  his  clothes  so  old  and  his  boots  so  ugly?  "  said 
Margaret. 

"  Why  is  he  the  son  of  a  Cuttisham  tradesman  ?  "  said 
Joan. 

"  Yes,  why  is  he  the  son  of  a  Cuttisham  tradesman  ?  " 
demanded  one  and  all  in  breathless  chorus. 


IN  THE  TEMPLE  OF  DIANA  109 

Delia  summoned  every  spark  of  her  courage. 

"  Why  should  he  not  be?  "  she  said,  fighting  against  the 
faintness  that  was  stealing  along  her  veins.  "  It  is  not  a 
wicked  thing  to  be  the  son  of  a  Cuttisham  tradesman  as 
far  as  I  can  see.  I  do  not  see  how  it  is  possible  to  despise 
a  man  like  that.  I  am  sure  that  those  who  do  so  are 
themselves  despicable." 

"  Delia !  "  they  cried  aghast. 

"  I  don't  care.     You  drove  me  to  it." 

"  Delia !  "  they  shouted.  "  What  would  mother  say  if 
she  heard  you  talk  in  this  way?  What  would  father 
say?" 

'*  I  don't  care,"  said  Delia.  "  It  is  the  way  I  feel. 
Mother  was  rude  to  him  at  luncheon;  and  when  he  had 
gone  she  spoke  of  him  cruelly." 

"  Delia,"  they  shouted,  "  what  are  you  saying  ?  " 

"  You  are  just  the  same,"  Delia  went  on  in  a  dreary 
voice;  and  just  then  in  a  vague  fashion  her  manner  re- 
called that  of  their  Uncle  Charles  when  he  had  a  glass 
of  whisky  in  his  hand.  "  You  are  very  cruel.  How  did 
Aunt  Emma  speak  of  him  the  other  day?  Now  that  I 
know  the  kind  of  man  he  is  I  can  see  how  horrid  it  was 
of  her  to  talk  of  him  like  that." 

"  And  now  that  we  have  seen  the  kind  of  man  he  is," 
said  Joan  in  the  voice  of  their  father,  "  we  can  see  that  for 
once  justice  was  on  Aunt  Emma's  side." 

"  I  shall  hate  you,  Joan,  if  you  talk  of  him  like  that," 
said  Delia  wildly;  she  was  losing  the  hold  she  had  kept 
on  herself  all  through.  "  I  shall  hate  everybody.  It  is 
cruel,  it  is  unjust!  " 

She  got  up,  cast  down  her  book,  threw  herself  upon  the 
sofa,  buried  her  head  in  its  dilapidated  cushions,  and  burst 
into  a  flood  of  tears.  Her  sisters  were  amazed.  None  of 
them  was  given  to  displays  of  that  kind.  They  formed  no 
part  of  their  Spartan  tenets.  And  the  cause  was  as  in- 
explicable as  such  a  behaviour  was  unprecedented.  There 
was  not  a  word  in  all  they  had  said  they  did  not  mean, 
which  was  not  perfectly  true.  They  could  not  possibly 
have  offended  Delia.     True,  she  might  choose  to  consider 


no  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

they  had  done  so.  On  thinking  it  over  they  could  only 
conclude  that  she  suffered  from  a  sense  of  injury,  which 
it  was  impossible  to  wreak  on  the  person  who  was  respon- 
sible for  it ;  but  now,  having  found  a  pretext  in  an  imag- 
inary grievance,  she  was  able  vicariously  to  visit  her 
wrongs  on  them. 

This  was  the  only  view  of  her  unheard-of  conduct  to 
which  they  could  subscribe.  They  were  sincerely  sorry 
for  her.  Truly,  it  was  hard,  poor  little  kid!  that  she 
should  be  condemned  to  spend  her  mornings  in  that  mis- 
erable way  when  she  would  so  dearly  love  to  be  out  hunt- 
ing like  themselves  with  their  father  and  their  Uncle 
Charles.  But,  after  all,  things  were  not  so  black  as  they 
seemed.  They  had  their  mother's  word  for  it  that  this 
horrid  man  was  only  coming  three  times  a  week.  Might 
it  not  be  arranged  that  he  should  come  on  those  days 
when  hounds  did  not  meet?  They  gave  their  sorely  dis- 
tressed youngest  sister  the  comfort  of  this  suggestion. 

"  It  might  even  be  arranged  that  one  of  the  days  should 
be  Sunday,"  said  Philippa,  the  weighty  and  the  practical. 

Strangely  enough,  however,  their  attempts  at  consola- 
tion did  not  lessen  Delia's  passionate  grief.  Never  had 
they  seen  anyone  weep  so  bitterly.  From  the  manner  of 
her  distress  they  might  have  inflicted  a  real  injury  upon 
her,  instead  of  one  whose  sole  existence  was  in  her  own 
imagination.  But  they  were  simple  creatures,  who  were 
soon  moved  to  remorse.  After  all,  they  should  have  been 
more  careful.  Some  of  the  things  they  had  said  of  her 
tutor  had  perhaps  been  intended  to  tease  her  a  little ;  and 
they  ought  to  have  refrained  from  chaff  of  any  sort  at  a 
time  when  the  poor  little  kid  was  only  too  likely  to  be 
overborne  by  her  troubles. 

Joan,  the  eldest,  the  spokeswoman  on  every  public 
occasion  for  them  all,  begged  her  pardon  gravely.  Had 
they  only  known,  they  would  certainly  not  have  breathed 
a  word  against  her  tutor  in  badinage  or  otherwise.  Nor 
for  a  moment  had  they  thought  it  likely  that  she  would 
resent  it.  Joan  was  good  enough  to  add  that  she  thought 
it  rather  chivalrous  of  her  to  stick  up  for  him  like  that, 


IN  THE  TEMPLE  OF  DIANA  iii 

notwithstanding  what  her  real  feelings  must  be;  that  it 
was  plucky  of  her,  and  that  she  was  a  brick.  Such  a  fine 
amende  from  Joan,  who  was  ever  foremost  in  snubbing 
her — she  was  the  author  of  the  famous  conundrum: 
"  Why  is  Delia  like  a  chair  ? — Because  it  is  her  nature  to 
be  sat  upon  " — they  felt  was  a  lordly  compensation  for  her 
fancied  wrongs. 

Nothing  they  could  say  or  do,  however,  had  the  power 
to  console  her.  She  kept  her  face  buried  in  the  sofa 
cushions.  The  distress  they  had  innocently  provoked  dis- 
tressed them  too.  But  they  could  find  no  remedy  for  it. 
They  said  nice  things  to  her,  they  said  nice  things  about 
her,  and  blamed  themselves  in  vain.  More  and  more  were 
they  puzzled,  for  they  could  gain  no  clue  to  this  extraor- 
dinary exhibition  of  her  grief.  And  when  at  last  re- 
luctantly they  left  her  still  surrendered  to  tears,  and  went 
to  dress  for  dinner,  their  minds  were  exercised  dread- 
fully. And  well  they  might  be,  since  Delia  was  at  as 
great  a  loss  to  account  for  her  behaviour  as  were  her  sis- 
ters themselves. 


CHAPTER  XII 

MAUD  WAYLING 

AT  dinner  that  evening  their  mother  made  an  an- 
nouncement. Maud  Wayling  was  coming  to  stay 
with  them  while  Billy  was  home  on  leave.  She  was  ex- 
pected to  arrive  the  next  morning,  and  Billy  was  to  come 
from  Windsor  in  the  evening. 

The  meal  was  more  cheerful  than  had  lately  been  the 
case.  Everybody  seemed  happy  with  the  exception  of 
Delia.  She,  it  was  true,  was  looking  miserable,  and  her 
eyes  were  red ;  but  at  no  time  could  she  be.  said  to  count 
at  the  dinner-table.  Indeed,  this  evening  her  unhappiness 
was  hardly  noticed,  because  their  father  was  so  gay.  This 
evening  the  load  of  care  that  had  come  upon  him  lately 
was  no  longer  there.  They  had  his  jovial  laugh  in  their 
ears — to  his  girls  there  was  no  music  like  it ;  he  took  a  new 
interest  in  the  things  around  him,  he  discussed  the  doings 
of  the  day,  and  twice  he  made  a  joke.  Their  mother, 
too,  was  in  wonderfully  good  heart.  To  be  sure,  she  was 
invariably,  but  to-night  it  seemed  as  if  her  lightness  of 
spirit  was  not  a  mere  effort  of  the  will.  Even  she,  the 
most  self-contained  of  people,  seemed  a  little  flushed  by 
the  coming  of  Maud  Wayling. 

The  girls  themselves  were  inclined  to  be  a  little  excited 
by  it.  In  a  vague  way  they  had  come  to  understand  that 
Miss  Wayling  was  a  sort  of  fairy  godmother  at  the  touch 
of  whose  magic  wand  the  fortunes  of  their  house  might 
be  re-established.  It  was  settled  that  Billy  was  to  be 
married  very  soon ;  and  somehow  it  was  expected  that  the 
marriage  would  add  to  the  happiness  of  their  father  and 
mother,  and  by  that  means  increase  their  own.    All  the 

112 


MAUD  WAYLING  113 

same,  at  present  they  were  inclined  to  be  a  little  in  awe  of 
Miss  Wayling. 

She  was  older  than  they  were,  and  although  they  had 
compared  notes  upon  their  dolls  when  they  were  quite 
small,  Joan  was  the  only  one  who  had  seen  her  since  she 
came  out.  That  was  at  a  dance  in  London  during  the 
season  in  which  Joan  herself  came  out.  There,  behold- 
ing Miss  Wayling  from  afar,  she  appeared  to  be  an  alto- 
gether dazzling  person,  and  Joan  thought  her  dress  was 
exquisite.  She  had  a  great  success,  but  it  was  a  curious 
thing  that  Billy  didn't  dance  with  her  once.  Joan  had 
remembered  this  because  she  had  an  excellent  memory. 

Still  it  was  idle  to  deny  that  the  six  critical  ladies  had 
already  formed  a  slight  prejudice  against  Miss  Wayling. 
No  matter  how  pleased  their  father  and  mother  might  be 
at  the  prospect  of  her  arrival,  no  matter  what  glowing 
accounts  were  given  of  her  niceness,  they  were  not  sure 
that  they  were  going  to  like  her  just  at  first.  Try  as  they 
might — and  to  do  them  justice  they  tried  very  hard  in- 
deed— they  found  it  impossible  to  rid  their  minds  of  the 
feeling  that  she  was  in  a  sense  an  interloper  who  was 
coming  to  steal  their  idol.  Then,  again,  Billy's  fiancee 
had  the  cordial  approval  of  Aunt  Emma,  a  fact  in  itself 
sufficient  to  condemn  an  angel  from  heaven. 

The  next  morning  about  twelve  o'clock,  William  the 
coachman — dear  old  William  whose  face  was  like  the  full 
moon! — ^brought  the  ramshackle  old  omnibus  up  to  the 
front  door  in  his  most  stately  manner.  He  had  on  his 
best  livery,  carefully  preserved  through  many  summers 
and  winters,  with  the  silver  buttons  on  it  shining  in  the 
February  sun  like  veritable  Koh-i-noors.  The  cockade 
in  his  absurd  old  hat  was  very  upright  and  full  of  conse- 
quence. George  the  footman,  who  shared  the  box-seat, 
was  a  worthy  companion.  Their  airs,  of  which,  to  be 
sure,  they  appeared  unconscious,  had  long  been  the  envy 
of  other  household  retainers  up  and  down  the  county. 
If  anything  could  have  embellished  the  crazy  vehicle  of 
which  William  and  George  had  the  charge,  surely  their 
demeanour  would  have  done  so.    Weak  the  flesh  of  this 


114  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

family,  but  the  spirit  was  still  vigorous.  Ancient,  gout- 
ridden  George  displayed  surprising  agility  in  descending 
from  the  box-seat  to  the  door  of  the  omnibus. 

The  Miss  Brokes  from  the  window  of  their  common- 
room,  which  by  a  rare  stroke  of  luck  overlooked  the  hall 
door,  witnessed  George's  descent.  Six  slender  bodies 
were  wedged  discreetly  behind  the  curtains,  like  so  many 
puppies  peeping  out  of  the  door  of  a  kennel.  Too  excited 
to  speak,  they  gazed  intensely.  There  were  six  pairs  of 
eager  feminine  eyes  for  everything.  Piles  of  luggage 
were  on  the  roof  of  the  omnibus ;  great  dress-baskets,  and 
most  alluring  leather  cases  of  every  conceivable  shape  and 
size.  Such  a  display  of  personal  belongings  struck  the 
first  note  of  awe.  The  vehicle  had  two  occupants.  The 
one  that  first  emerged  was  not  specially  distinguished  in 
appearance;  in  fact,  for  a  moment  they  had  quite  a  pang 
of  disappointment.  Of  course — how  stupid! — it  was  her 
maid.  Such  a  princess  of  a  creature  could  not  possibly 
come  without  her  maid. 

The  next  moment  they  obtained  a  glimpse  of  some  very 
remarkable  feathers  stuck  in  a  very  remarkable  hat.  Then 
they  saw  a  long  dark  blue  travelling-cloak  that  was  lined 
with  very  expensive-looking  fur.  They  could  divine  noth- 
ing of  its  inhabitant  except  that  she  was  uncommonly 
tall  and  somewhat  pale.  She  carried  her  head  in  the  air, 
loftily,  they  thought,  quite  as  you  would  expect  a  princess 
to  carry  it.     Her  way  of  walking  was  rather  splendid. 

It  thrilled  them  to  see  their  mother,  least  demonstrative 
of  women,  come  down  the  steps  to  greet  the  august  visitor, 
and  kiss  her  affectionately  on  both  cheeks. 

In  the  hall  there  seemed  to  be  a  commotion  of  wel- 
come. 

Their  mother's  clear  tones  rose  higher  and  higher.  And 
through  the  open  door  of  their  room  came  the  deeper 
tones  of  their  father.  Within  a  minute  he  was  there  to 
summon  them. 

"  Come  along,  girls,"  he  said.  "  No  hanging  back. 
Come  and  give  a  welcome  to  Miss  Wayling." 

He  ushered  the  six  of  them  into  the  hall  proudly  and 


MAUD  WAYLING  115 

gravely.  Whenever  he  presented  them  to  a  stranger  he 
could  never  dissemble  the  pride  he  had  in  them.  It  was 
always  so  unmistakable  in  his  manner  that  people  were  apt 
to  be  amused  by  it.  If  they  had  been  six  of  the  greatest 
beauties  it  could  not  have  been  more  obvious. 

Joan  was  first  presented  to  Miss  Wayling,  and  then 
Philippa,  and  then  the  others  in  the  order  of  their  entrance 
into  the  world.  Precedence  was  a  point  on  which  they 
were  very  nice.  It  would  have  been  unpardonable  had 
one  of  them  come  forward  out  of  their  turn  ordained  by 
the  date  of  her  birth.  Miss  Wayling  and  the  six  ladies 
of  the  house  of  Broke  shook  hands  gravely.  Billy's  sis- 
ters felt  at  once  that  they  had  never  seen  anyone  quite  so 
beautiful  as  Miss  Wayling,  and  in  the  same  instant  they 
had  all  become  a  little  afraid  of  her. 

There  is  an  air  of  mystery  about  great  beauty,  as  though 
its  possessor  inhales  a  rarefied  ether,  and  dwells  on  a  plane 
remote  from  the  common  earth.  As  soon  as  Miss  Wayling 
had  turned  her  wonderful  grey  eyes  on  her  new  friends 
with  a  steady  penetration  of  gaze  which  in  another  might 
have  meant  no  more  than  a  certain  sincerity  of  contem- 
plation, somehow  they  felt  themselves  to  be  drawing  back. 

When  presently  they  sat  at  luncheon  and  Miss  Wayling 
had  removed  her  travelling-cloak,  they  recognized  with 
the  perfect  honesty  of  their  natures  that  her  loveliness 
was  even  greater  than  at  first  they  had  felt  it  was.  She 
was  formed  as  nobly  as  a  goddess,  in  long  and  wonderful 
lines,  her  skin  was  like  marble,  her  eyes  like  lakes  brood- 
ing in  the  heart  of  a  dark  forest  haunted  with  mystery. 

Miss  Wayling  was  rather  reserved,  they  thought.  Their 
mother  started  many  topics  of  conversation  with  her  usual 
tact,  but  beyond  the  statement  that  it  had  turned  out  quite 
a  nice  day  after  all,  although  it  was  raining  when  she  left 
London,  and  that  she  was  glad  Billy  was  to  arrive  that 
evening  in  time  for  dinner,  she  said  hardly  anything.  No 
subject  seemed  to  interest  her  particularly,  and  such  was 
their  sensitiveness  that  they  almost  feared  she  might  be  a 
little  bored  already.  It  almost  came  as  a  relief  when  she 
went  to  the  drawing-room  with  their  mother. 


ii6  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

Joan  only  had  ventured  to  speak  a  word  to  this  regal 
creature,  and  that  only  because  good  manners  seemed  to 
call  for  it.  Never  before  had  they  been  so  self-conscious ; 
at  all  costs  they  felt  they  must  guard  against  the  risk  of 
a  snub.  But  that  exquisite  personality  would  have  made 
anyone  sensitive.  They  felt  that  if  in  any  way,  however 
slight,  she  were  not  to  respond  to  them,  they  would  be 
humiliated. 

In  their  den  that  afternoon  Delia  astonished  her  five 
sisters  immensely  by  bursting  forth  into  a  rhapsody  on  the 
subject  of  Miss  Wayling's  looks. 

"  She  is  like  a  beautiful  picture,"  said  their  youngest 
sister  in  a  hushed  voice.  "  I  have  often  wondered  why 
great  poets  worshipped  beautiful  women,  but  I  think  I 
know  now.  She  is  just  like  some  beautiful  picture  that 
has  grown  alive.  Oh,  how  beautiful,  how  very  beautiful 
she  is !     I  suppose  she  must  be  very  unhappy." 

They  were  rather  astonished  at  Delia's  extravagance. 
Yet,  allowing  for  her  proverbial  silliness  they  believed 
they  knew  what  she  meant.  It  was  surprising  that  one  so 
beautiful  and  so  rich,  with  lovely  clothes  and  jewels  and 
a  maid  of  her  own,  was  not  more  gay.  One  would  have 
thought  that  such  a  favourite  of  fortune  would  be  ex- 
tremely happy,  yet  that  was  far  from  being  the  impression 
that  she  gave. 

A  little  later  in  the  afternoon  Aunt  Emma  called.  She 
was  accompanied  by  Uncle  Charles.  It  was  not  usual  for 
them  to  arrive  together,  but  their  interest  in  the  momen- 
tous event  was  very  real ;  indeed,  nothing  could  have  been 
more  eloquent  of  its  great  importance.  Uncle  Charles 
only  went  to  other  places  when  duty  called  him,  but  he 
came  over  nearly  every  day  from  Hipsley  when  he  was  at 
home,  to  pass  the  time  of  day  with  their  father  and 
mother  and  to  see  his  nieces.  He  said  they  were  such 
plain,  sensible  people,  that  they  suited  him,  although,  to 
be  sure,  he  said  their  father's  whisky  was  a  disgrace  to 
the  neighbourhood.  Uncle  Charles  took  a  real  interest  in 
them  all,  and  came  willingly  "  to  see  the  filly." 

Aunt  Emma  was  in  high  feather.     She  was  extraor- 


MAUD  WAYLING  117 

dinarily  kind  and  gracious  to  Miss  Wayling,  and  it  was 
wonderful  how  kind  and  gracious  she  could  be  when  she 
chose.  She  talked  with  her  voice  at  its  most  agreeable 
pitch  about  travel  and  politics  and  London  Society;  did 
dear  Maud  know  that  Mr.  Blank  was  certain  to  be  prime 
minister,  was  it  really  true  about  the  X's,  how  sad  it  was 
about  the  Y's,  and  did  she  know  the  Z's? — all  with  an 
animation  that  they  had  never  observed  before  in  that 
paragon  of  austerity.  She  was  even  kind  enough  to  say 
that  as  soon  as  Covenden  bored  dear  Maud,  a  contingency 
that  was  bound  to  happen  almost  at  once,  she  must  come 
over  to  Hipsley  and  spend  a  few  days  with  her. 

**  I  pity  you,  my  dear,"  said  the  kind  lady.  "  I  always 
say  my  nieces  are  the  six  dullest  girls  in  England.  Why 
is  horseflesh  so  demoralizing  to  women?  The  hopeless 
creatures !  " — ^Aunt  Emma's  laugh  had  taken  its  cutting 
edge — "  they  cannot  talk  about  anything  except  stables 
and  kennels  and  bran-mashes,  and  they  cannot  do  any- 
thing except  sit  in  a  saddle  and  walk  puppies.  But  Billy 
is  coming  this  evening,  isn't  he,  so  perhaps  you  will  be 
able  to  survive  for  a  week  at  any  rate." 

Billy  was  expected  to  arrive  at  Cuttisham  by  the  seven 
o'clock  train.  About  six  o'clock  a  telegram  came  to  say 
that  he  could  not  come  that  night  as  he  was  unavoidably 
detained.  Miss  Wayling  flushed  ever  so  slightly.  She 
asked  to  be  allowed  to  read  the  telegram. 

"  I  see  it  was  handed  in  in  Piccadilly,"  she  said  in  her 
very  quiet  and  level  voice.  "  He  is  not  detained  at  Wind- 
sor then." 

The  flush  deepened  ever  so  little.  At  least  Billy's  sis- 
ters thought  so. 

Dinner  was  a  very  dull  affair.  A  reaction  from  his  late 
good  spirits  seemed  to  have  come  upon  their  father,  and 
even  their  mother  had  not  her  former  gaiety.  Miss  Way- 
ling spoke  hardly  a  word.  It  was  a  relief  to  the  girls  when 
the  rather  miserable  function  was  at  an  end.  They  had 
looked  forward  to  that  evening  with  feelings  so  different. 
They  could  have  wept  for  disappointment;  for  once  even 
their  appetites  seemed  to  feel  it,  and  Philippa  alone  took 


ii8  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN. 

a  second  helping  of  their  favourite  cabinet  pudding.  And 
more  than  ever  v^ere  they  made  uncomfortable  by  the  pres- 
ence of  Miss  Wayling. 

The  next  morning  there  w^as  a  meet  of  the  hounds. 
Courtesy  required  that  they  should  ask  Miss  Wayling  if 
she  hunted,  and  as  she  had  brought  no  horses  of  her  own 
they  must  be  prepared  to  mount  her  from  their  own 
scanty  stable.  Fervently  they  hoped  she  did  not  hunt, 
not  for  any  sordid  reason,  but  they  shirked  the  great  re- 
sponsibility of  piloting  her  across  a  strange  country  and 
generally  looking  after  her.  They  were  much  relieved 
when  she  said  she  did  not  care  for  hunting  or  any  kind 
of  sport. 

Billy  did  not  come  that  day,  nor  the  day  after,  nor  yet 
for  many  days.  His  absence  was  inexplicable.  His 
mother  wrote  him  twice ;  once  to  his  quarters  at  Windsor, 
and  once  to  his  club  in  London.  She  did  not  receive  an 
answer  to  either  of  her  letters.  It  was  the  strangest  thing ! 
A  fortnight  had  passed  since  his  leave  had  begun;  he 
knew  that  his  fiancee  was  staying  at  Covenden,  and  he 
had  certainly  made  his  mother  a  promise  that  he  would 
pay  one  of  his  rather  infrequent  visits  to  his  home  while 
she  was  there. 

His  absence  was  a  mystery. 

Miss  Wayling  said  nothing,  but  to  the  relentless  fem- 
inine observers  by  whom  she  was  surrounded  it  was  clear 
that  she  felt  it  in  her  impercipient  way.  Her  silence  was 
rather  painful,  and  the  flush  they  had  managed  to  surprise 
once  or  twice  in  her  face  seemed  to  burn  deeper  every 
time  it  came. 

In  the  meantime  the  world  had  been  let  into  the  secret. 
A  paragraph  had  appeared  in  the  Morning  Post,  and  had 
been  copied  in  the  Cuttisham  Advertiser  and  the  Park- 
shire  Times  and  Echo,  to  the  effect  that  a  marriage  had 
been  arranged  and  would  shortly  take  place  between  Mr. 
W.  E.  Broke  of  the  Royal  Horse  Guards  and  Maud, 
daughter  of  the  late  Charles  Wayling,  of  Calow,  co.  Salop. 

Billy's  absence  began  to  be  a  subject  of  comment.  Lady 
Bosket  had  remarked  upon  it  to  her  friends  and  neigh- 


MAUD  WAYLING  119 

bours;  they,  in  turn,  remarked  upon  it  to  theirs.  Lord 
Bosket  commented  on  it  freely.  So  open  was  his  nature 
that  it  did  not  occur  to  him  that  his  frankness  could  do 
harm.  He  felt  that  the  :case  of  Miss  Wayling  and  his 
nephew  had  its  counterpart  in  the  tragedy  whose  moral 
he  was  never  weary  of  pointing  out  of  his  own  experi- 
ence. 

"  I  tell  you  what  it  is,  my  boy,"  he  would  say  to  each 
of  his  cronies  in  turn,  "  the  colt  can't  be  got  to  the  post. 
And  not  such  a  bad  judge  neither.  Knows  a  thing  or 
two,  what?  Education's  spread  a  bit  since  our  time. 
These  young  fellers  can  teach  their  grandmothers  to  suck 
eggs  these  days,  bless  you.  These  young  'uns  are  so  fly 
nowadays,  they  won't  even  put  their  monickers  to  a 
money-lender's  bill  without  they've  got  their  lawyers  with 
*em,  bless  you.  But  small  blame  to  the  lad,  say  I.  Wish 
I'd  had  half  the  beggar's  sense." 

Still,  the  matter  was  becoming  awkward.  Miss  Wayling 
was  still  very  reticent  even  to  Mrs.  Broke,  but  the  Miss 
Brokes  were  sure  she  felt  it  keenly,  although  their  sense  of 
justice  compelled  them  to  admit  that  she  bore  it  with  great 
dignity.  They  were  very  sorry  for  her  privately;  al- 
though she  could  not  be  said,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  she 
had  been  with  them  a  fortnight,  to  be  yet  admitted  to  their 
friendship.  Still,  they  could  see  that  in  her  aloof  way 
she  thought  a  lot  of  Billy.  So  much  at  least  had  to  be 
allowed  her.  And  such  was  their  instinct  for  justice  that 
they  were  even  inclined  to  admit  that  had  such  a  con- 
tingency been  possible,  this  Was  an  occasion  when  their 
hero  was  hardly  doing  himself  credit.  Those  were  sore 
days  for  their  mother,  but  they  were  obliged  to  admire 
her  will.  Nobody  was  able  to  look  behind  that  indomitable 
smiling,  almost  gay  exterior.  Their  father,  poor  man, 
had  no  such  arts  for  his  protection.  He  was  wounded 
and  angry ;  and  those  who  wished  to  learn  to  what  extent 
had  only  to  look  into  his  face. 

At  last,  when  Billy  had  made  them  all  so  uncomfortable 
that  his  father  had  vowed  it  should  be  no  longer  endured, 
and  had  even  affirmed  his  intention  of  running  up  to  Lon- 


I20  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

don  to  rout  the  fellow  out  of  his  club — his  father  was  cer- 
tain that  he  was  to  be  found  there  playing  bridge — he  had 
the  grace  to  write  a  few  lines  to  his  mother.  It  was  to 
tell  her  that  he  would  arrive  at  Covenden  on  the  evening 
of  the  next  day.  He  would  come  by  the  seven  o'clock 
train,  the  one  he  had  been  prevented  coming  by  before; 
but  he  was  sorry  that  he  would  not  be  able  to  stay  longer 
than  the  evening  following,  having  by  now  made  such  a 
hole  in  his  leave  that  it  did  not  extend  beyond  that  lim- 
ited period. 

His  father  fumed  when  this  letter  was  shown  to  him 
and  vowed  he  would  have  it  out  with  master  William. 
Such  behaviour  was  monstrous,  and  would  no  more  have 
been  tolerated  by  parents  in  his  day,  than  a  son — an  eld- 
est son  particularly — would  have  been  guilty  of  it.  Then 
it  was,  in  the  face  of  this  wholly  unusual  outburst  of  their 
father's,  that  Maud  Wayling  rose  several  points  in  the 
estimation  of  her  critics. 

"  It  may  not  be  his  fault,"  she  said.  *'  I  feel  sure  there 
is  a  good  reason  for  his  absence." 

"  Why  didn't  he  write  before  then  ?  "  said  their  father 
unmollified. 

"  I  feel  sure  there  is  some  excellent  reason,"  quietly  per- 
sisted Maud  Wayling. 

"  I  agree  with  you,  my  dear  Maud,"  said  their  mother. 
"  I  am  sure  you  are  right ;  and  Edmund,  I  hope  you  will 
not  mention  the  subject  to  him  until  he  has  taken  the 
opportunity  of  giving  me  an  explanation  privately." 

As  usual,  their  father  deferred  to  the  wisdom  of  their 
mother.  It  was  his  invariable  habit  in  all  matters  of  this 
kind. 

Billy's  sisters  somehow  felt  that  this  was  "  rather  brick- 
ish"  of  Maud  Wayling.  It  was  nice  of  her  to  stick  up 
for  him  fearlessly  and  publicly,  when  it  would  have  been 
quite  natural  to  resent  the  affront  that  had  been  offered 
her.  So  sensitive  were  they  to  "  good  form  "  that  they 
could  not  shirk  the  terribly  painful  fact  that  their  hero 
hardly  deserved  to  be  stuck  up  for.  At  any  rate  Maud 
Wayling's  attitude  did  her  great  credit.    If  at  a  time 


MAUD  WAYLING  121 

when  she  must  be  sorely  wounded  by  Billyhs  behaviour 
she  could  stick  up  for  him  like  that,  they  were  bound 
in  honour  to  consider  her  "  a  bit  of  a  sportsman  in  her 
way." 

At  last  the  day  came  upon  which  the  young  prince  was 
to  arrive.  Dinner  was  half  an  hour  later  than  usual.  The 
girls  had  never  seen  any  creature  so  beautiful  as  Maud 
Wayling  as  she  sat  in  the  drawing-room  perfunctorily 
turning  over  the  pages  of  an  album,  while  their  mother 
knitted  a  waistcoat  for  their  father,  and  while  they,  one 
and  all,  awaited  the  young  man's  arrival  in  a  state  of  ten- 
sion that  was  almost  painful.  This  evening  there  was  a 
kind  of  flush  in  Miss  Wayling's  cheeks,  which  made  her 
look  absolutely  lovely.  Her  gown  was  exquisitely  sim- 
ple; yet  it  was  the  simplicity  which  came  from  Paris. 
Her  hair  was  dressed  beautifully;  her  maid  came  from 
Paris  also.  They  were  too  spellbound  by  her  appearance 
to  be  sensitive  about  their  own.  In  the  presence  of  this 
splendour,  overawed  and  yet  delighted  by  it  as  they  were, 
they  could  spare  no  thoughts  for  their  own  dowdy  old 
frocks  of  the  season  before  last,  and  their  hair  twisted  and 
coiled  into  unwilling  order  by  no  fingers  cunninger  than 
their  own. 

This  time  Billy  came.  He  arrived  with  the  grace  and 
assurance  of  the  young  prince  who  knows  no  law  beyond 
his  own  inclination.  He  placed  his  hands  on  his  moth- 
er's shoulders  with  arrogant  affection. 

"  Here  I  am,  old  mums ! "  he  said,  patting  her  fear- 
lessly. "  Rather  rotten  to  keep  dinner  like  this.  Bally 
train  was  twenty  minutes  late  out  of  Paddington.  But 
you  don't  mind,  mummy  ?     I  don't  come  to  see  you  often." 

He  then  saluted  his  father  cheerfully,  Maud  Wayling 
with  the  charming  nonchalance  that  was  part  of  him,  and 
his  sisters  with  a  laugh,  a  nod,  and  a  wave  of  the  hand 
that  embraced  them  all  in  a  manner  that  was  the  perfec- 
tion of  the  casual  and  the  friendly. 

Without  further  apology  from  the  young  man  they  went 
in  to  dinner.  The  meal  was  quite  gay.  Billy  overflowed 
with  high  spirits.     He  was  a  perfectly  frank  and  whole- 


122  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

some  being,  with  the  merriest  laugh  and  the  sunniest  tem- 
per in  the  world.  From  the  moment  he  came  into  a  room 
you  could  not  help  falling  in  love  with  him.  He  was  such 
a  beautiful  animal,  six  feet  high,  a  fair-skinned  Saxon 
Adonis  with  every  muscle  in  play.  The  very  striking  fea- 
tures of  his  race,  with  which  his  sisters  were  a  little  over- 
burdened, were  to  him  a  decided  embellishment.  His  com- 
plexion any  woman  might  have  envied ;  its  pink  bloom  was 
the  fruit  of  health,  expensive  living,  and  exercise  in  the 
open  air.  His  blond  moustache  could  compete  with  any 
in  the  service.  He  had  a  pair  of  very  blue  eyes,  large, 
bold,  wide-set,  merry,  and  fearless.  It  was  not  to  be 
wondered  at  that  their  possessor's  great  claim  to  distinc- 
tion rested  on  the  fact  that  he  was  one  of  the  most  intrepid 
"  No.  3's  "  that  ever  rode  on  to  a  polo  ground. 

To  this  amiable  tyrant  every  member  of  his  family 
bowed  down.  He  had  his  foot  on  the  necks  of  them  all. 
It  was  no  secret  that  he  could  twist  his  mother  round 
his  little  finger.  His  father  might  fulminate  against  him 
in  his  absence,  even  as  he  had  done  now,  but  he  was  really 
no  better  able  to  withstand  the  blandishments  of  Billy  than 
anybody  else.  Who  could  withstand  his  free,  affectionate, 
light-hearted  ways?  Certainly  not  his  sisters.  They  vied 
with  one  another  in  a  proper  adoration.  To  them  he  was 
always  the  one  legitimate  young  prince  who  set  the  stand- 
ard of  youthful  manhood.  He  had  no  peer  in  those 
reverent  eyes. 

Everybody  tried  to  spoil  him ;  even  at  Eton  he  had  been 
the  most  popular  boy  in  Sixpenny.  His  winning  ways 
had  defeated  his  tutors  and  playfellows  with  ridiculous 
ease.  It  had  been  the  simplest  thing  in  the  world  for  him 
to  steal  any  horse  to  which  his  fancy  turned,  while  his 
companions,  were  hardly  permitted  to  look  over  the  hedge 
of  the  field  in  which  that  particular  quadruped  wagged  its 
tail. 

During  dinner  Billy  did  not  offer  a  word  in  explanation 
of  his  strange  absence  of  the  fortnight  past.  Certainly  he 
referred  to  his  bad  luck  at  bridge.  In  that  period  he  had 
lost  one  hundred  and  ninety  pounds;  an  admission  which 


MAUD  WAYLING  123 

gave  colour  to  his  father's  theory  that  his  club  had  been 
his  hiding-place. 

"  Fact  is,  I'm  dead  out  of  luck,"  he  said  cheerfully. 
"  I've  been  having  wretched  luck  with  my  ponies  lately. 
By  the  way,  mummy,  I  got  your  cheque  all  right.  My 
tailor  fellow  is  getting  a  bit  restive  though.  I'd  go  to 
some  other  authorized  robber  if  it  were  not  that  the  only 
way  to  keep  him  civil  is  to  order  new  clothes  whether  you 
want  'em  or  not.     Unreasonable  set  of  people — tailors." 

The  unreasonableness  of  tailors  formed  perhaps  the 
most  pregnant  fact  in  the  experience  of  the  young  prince. 
A  little  whimsically  he  looked  round  the  table  for  condo- 
lence. His  mother  smiled  humorously,  although,  to  be 
sure,  she  took  in  her  breath  rather  sharp ;  his  father  gave 
a  weary  guffaw;  his  sisters  declared  as  one  that  tailors 
were  abominable;  while  Maud  Wayling,  as  usual,  did  not 
say  anything,  but  contented  herself  with  looking  at  Billy 
pensively  with  an  odd  droop  in  the  corners  of  her  mouth. 

After  dinner,  Billy,  who  was  the  incarnation  of  energy, 
initiated  his  sisters  into  the  mysteries  of  a  new  parlour 
game.  For  that  purpose  he  produced  a  small  wooden  box 
acquired  in  Regent  Street  that  afternoon;  so  that  pres- 
ently the  joust  of  ball  and  battledore  resounded  from  the 
billiard  room.  Billy,  of  course,  was  easily  first  in  this 
martial  exercise,  although  the  Miss  Brokes  were  fain  to 
admit  that  Maud  Wayling  played  a  far  better  game  than 
was  to  have  been  expected.  But  she  had  played  before, 
as  Joan  made  her  confess  when  the  eldest  daughter  of  the 
house  of  Broke  was  ignominiously  defeated  in  "  a  love 
set."  The  proceedings  became  really  interesting  when 
Joan,  whose  haughty  spirit  could  not  brook  defeat,  chal- 
lenged Miss  Wayling  to  a  second  encounter.  But  even  on 
this  occasion  she  fared  little  better,  in  spite  of  the  mighty 
efforts  she  put  forth.  Again  she  had  to  bow  the  knee  to 
the  victorious  Maud,  this  time  with  a  special  colour  in  her 
face  as  she  performed  that  action. 

There  was  one  circumstance  that  struck  Billy's  sisters 
that  evening  with  surprise.  He  hardly  spoke  a  word  to 
Maud ;  in  fact,  had  such  a  thing  been  possible,  it  almost 


124  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

seemed  that,  like  themselves,  he  was  a  little  in  awe  of  her. 
Considering  the  special  relation  they  had  come  to  occupy 
towards  one  another  it  could  not  be  with  him  as  with  them ; 
surely  he  could  not  be  a  little  afraid  and  a  little  mistrust- 
ful of  her  too.  All  the  same  there  was  something  in  his 
bearing  which  gave  them  to  think.  But  their  sense  of 
delicacy  was  far  too  great  to  allow  such  speculations  to 
take  shape  in  words. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

AFFORDS  THE  SPECTACLE  OF  A  WOMAN  OF  THE  WORLD 
COPING  WITH   DIFFICULTIES 

DIRECTLY  he  had  eaten  his  breakfast  the  next  morn- 
ing Billy  linked  his  arm  through  his  mother's  in 
his  affectionate  and  familiar  way. 

"  I  say,  mummy,  my  leave's  up  to-day ;  I  shall ,  have  to 
get  back  to-night ;  and  before  I  go  I  want  to  have  a  word 
with  you  privately  about  something  that's — well — that's 
annoyed  me." 

"  That's  annoyed  you,  my  precious  lamb,"  said  his 
mother  tenderly,  letting  her  hand  lie  on  his  arm.  "  What 
can  it  be,  I  wonder !  To  think  that  anything  should  have 
annoyed  you ! '' 

Billy,  by  the  time  he  had  closed  the  door  of  his  moth- 
er's room,  had  concluded  that  he  must  be  careful.  He 
knew  her  little  ways;  therefore  he  made  a  dash  at  the 
subject  with  as  little  preface  as  possible. 

"  You  see,  it's  like  this,  you  wily  old  thing.  They've 
been  sticking  their  rotten  paragraphs  into  their  rotten 
papers  about  Maud  and  me.  People  do  nothing  but  con- 
gratulate me.  They  write  to  me;  stop  me  in  the  street; 
pat  me  on  the  back  whenever  they  see  me;  when  is  the 
happy  day  and  so  so!  I'm  having  a  cheery  time,  I  can 
tell  you.  Why,  I  am  even  having  presents  sent  me.  Now 
I  want  your  advice,  mummy.  You  are  such  a  wise  old 
bird;  you  are  so  awfully  clever.  Ought  I  to  write  and 
contradict  it,  or  would  it  be  better  to  ignore  it?  But 
then,  you  see,  even  if  I  ignore  it  other  people  won't." 

His  mother's  countenance  assumed  a  very  charming 
expression. 

125 


126  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  What  an  absurd  boy ! "  she  said  in  a  voice  like  a 
flute. 

"  Absurd !  "  said  Billy.  "  Why,  it  is  a  pretty  serious 
thing,  you  know,  to  have  it  printed  in  the  papers  and 
so  on,  that  a  man  is  going  to  marry  a  girl  when  he  has 
no  intention.     It  is  awkward,  mummy." 

"  I  don't  quite  understand,  my  pet." 

"  Why,  it  says  in  the  papers  that  a  marriage  has  been 
arranged  between  Maud  and  myself." 

"  Well,  my  precious  ?  " 

The  note  of  interrogation  was  truly  beatific. 

"  Well,  mummy?  "  said  Billy  blankly. 

For  the  moment  mother  and  son  stood  looking  at  one 
another  in  a  way  that  a  third  person  might  have  found 
diverting.  Humour  lurked  at  the  corners  of  Mrs.  Broke's 
lips,  and  an  amused  smile  was  in  her  eyes;  on  the  other 
hand,  the  light  of  mirth  was  conspicuously  absent  from  her 
son's  crimson  countenance. 

'*  Oh !  you  know  it  won't  do  at  all ! "  he  said,  breaking 
the  silence  rather  awkwardly.  "  You  are  playing  a  game, 
my  dear;  but  it  isn't  quite  the  right  one,  you  know." 

His  mother  offered  a  gentle  rebuke. 

Billy  shook  his  head  ruefully.  "  Maud's  a  million  times 
too  good  for  a  chap  like  me,  don't  you  know." 

"  You  are  talking  nonsense,  my  pet,  aren't  you  ?  I  am 
sure  dear  Maud  is  devoted  to  you." 

"  Can't  help  her  good  taste,  mummy."  Somehow  the 
laugh  seemed  a  little  out  of  key.  Rather  anxiously  the 
young  man  drew  a  handkerchief  of  vivid  hue  out  of  one 
sleeve  and  tucked  it  carefully  in  the  other. 

"  Perhaps  you  are  a  little  alarmed,  my  darling,  by  her 
beautiful  nature.  You  must  believe  me,  my  dear  one, 
when  I  assure  you  that  at  present  you  are  all  a  little  in- 
clined to  underrate  dear  Maud.  She  is  a  little  reserved, 
dear  child,  but  you  will  find  her  nature  very  sweet  and 
affectionate  when  you  grow  to  appreciate  it  more." 

"  Oh,  yes,  mummy,  I  daresay." 

"  My  angel ! "  said  his  mother  in  tones  that  sang,  "  do 


A  WOMAN  OF  THE  WORLD  127 

you  feel  that  one  of  your  years  has  had  the  experience 
necessary  to  choose  for  himself?  One  must  have  arrived 
at  a  period  of  full  development  to  be  a  competent  judge 
in  a  matter  of  this  kind.  Your  father  was  thirty  when 
he  married  me,  and  I  was  twenty-five;  and  then  of  course 
we  took  the  advice  of  our  parents.  Believe  me,  my  pre- 
cious, there  is  a  certain  matured  knowledge  of  the  world 
required  for  the  choosing  of  a  wife.  You  -cannot  have 
a  new  one  every  year;  you  cannot  order  a  new  one  for 
every  change  of  mood  or  phase  of  fashion.  One  has  to 
choose  the  qualities  that  will  wear  well,  as  dear  Doctor 
Primrose  said." 

"  Suppose  I  don't  want  a  wife?  How  do  you  know  I 
want  a  wife,  mummy  ?  " 

"  There  again,  my  precious,  I  am  sure  the  wise  course 
would  be  to  put  yourself  in  the  hands  of  those  who  have 
had  more  experience.  Surely,  my  dear  one,  if  your  own 
mother  does  not  know  what  your  requirements  are,  may 
I  ask  who  does  ?  " 

Billy  had  no  talent  for  argument,  as  he  would  have  been 
the  first  to  admit.  He  felt  that  the  most  facile  of  rea- 
soners  would  have  routed  him  utterly  and  put  him  to 
shame.  On  this  final  point  she  had  urged  he  had  no  reply 
to  make  to  his  mother.  As  soon  as  it  came  to  argument 
he  knew  he  could  not  stand  up  before  her.  All  the  same 
he  was  tenacious  in  the  matter  of  his  ideas.  Their  scarcity 
rendered  them  choice.  He  set  himself  down  as  a  fool,  and 
his  mother  set  him  down  as  deficient  in  character,  but  if 
he  once  took  an  idea  into  his  head  it  required  a  great  deal 
of  getting  out  again.  He  was  like  his  father  in  that. 
The  fact  was  there  to  confront  all  who  had  to  grapple 
with  either  father  or  son,  that  although  they  were  sub- 
scribers to  very  few  ideas  indeed,  for  each  had  an  in- 
stinctive dislike  of  such  mischievous  things,  once  let 
therm  be  planted  in  their  minds,  and  they  took  a  deal  of 
uprooting.  His  mother,  who  knew  far  more  about  the 
young  man  than  he  knew  about  himself,  could  not  help 
feeling  there  was  a  certain  perverseness  in  the  fact  that 


128  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

one  whose  mental  habit  hardly  permitted  him  to  carry 
two  ideas  under  his  hat,  should  yet  at  this  moment  be  in 
possession  of  one  so  unfortunate. 

Deficient  in  character  as  he  was,  this  one  little  idea 
enabled  him  to  keep  his  head  up  and  his  flag  flying.  He 
might  be  at  a  loss  for  a  reply  in  words  to  his  mother's 
reasoning,  but  he  continued  rather  doggedly  to  confront 
her.  To  be  sure,  he  was  a  little  agitated,  but  there  was  a 
kind  of  crassness  in  him  that  nothing  could  defeat.  Mrs. 
Broke  had  ha,d  occasion  more  than  once  to  deplore  it  in 
his  father.  She  had  her  experiences  in  handling  that 
Briton  to  guide  her.  In  most  things  father  and  son  would 
listen  to  reason,  as  dispensed  by  herself  the  never-failing 
fount.  But  there  were  just  one  or  two  in  which  they  were 
not  so  amenable. 

Billy's  scruples,  or  rather  his  prejudices,  would  call  for 
delicacy.  The  foolish  fellow  must  be  handled  tenderly. 
His  mother  saw  at  once  that  argument,  mellifluous  as  it 
was  when  it  flowed  from  her  Pierian  lips,  would  not  have 
a  straw's  weight  with  him.  In  the  fulness  of  her  wisdom, 
therefore,  she  decided  to  waive  the  matter.  With  his 
father's  character  to  guide  her,  and  recalling  the  mistakes 
of  her  early  married  life,  she  closed  the  discussion  rather 
abruptly.  When  the  time  came  she  would  have  to  be 
prepared  to  force  the  young  gentleman's  hand. 

Not  another  word  passed  between  mother  and  son  on 
this  subject.  Billy  returned  to  his  regiment  that  after- 
noon. He  went  as  light-heartedly  as  he  came,  with  a 
frank  adieu  to  everybody  and  a  useful  cheque  in  his  pocket- 
book.  His  sisters  in  a  body  accompanied  him  on  bicycles 
to  Cuttisham  railway  station.  All  the  way  along  the 
avenue  they  laughed  and  chattered  gaily,  but  the  voice  of 
Billy  was  the  gayest  of  all.  It  was  impossible  not  to  be 
happy  when  this  splendid  brother  was  of  the  company. 
He  was  as  hail-fellow-well-met  with  them  as  with  the  rest 
of  the  world.  He  chaffed  them,  teased  them,  made  them 
his  comrades.  Well  might  they  worship  the  ground  on 
which  he  trod ! 

Miss  Wayling  was  not  of  the  party.     Billy  had  taken 


A  WOMAN  OF  THE  WORLD  129 

his  leave  of  her  in  the  drawing-room ;  a  very  pleasant  and 
friendly  good-bye.  A  hyper-sensitive  person  might  have 
seen  something  a  little  perfunctory  in  it,  but  certainly 
nothing  was  expressed  in  that  charming  manner  of  which 
any  one  had  a  right  to  complain.  Still,  no  sooner  had  the 
gay  voices  died  away  down  the  drive  than  Miss  Wayling 
went  to  her  room,  turned  out  her  maid  who  was  altering 
an  evening-gown,  and  locked  the  door.  She  sat  looking 
into  the  fire  for  several  hours  in  a  mechanical  way.  Some 
burden  had  apparently  come  upon  her  thoughts. 

She  did  not  appear  again  in  public  until  dinner,  and  then 
it  was  remarked  by  her  critics  that  she  was  even  duller, 
if  possible,  than  before  Billy  came.  Perhaps  she  was 
upset  by  his  going  away  so  soon ;  certainly  they  had  never 
seen  anybody  look  so  sad  as  she  that  evening. 

At  bedtime,  as  Maud  was  lighting  a  candle,  Mrs.  Broke 
spoke  words  of  consolation. 

"  You  must  not  take  his  off -handedness  to  seriously,  my 
dear  child,"  she  said  in  her  velvet  voice.  "  Men  are  like 
that.  They  strive  always  to  hide  their  real  feelings ;  they 
are  so  afraid  of  giving  themselves  away,  poor  dears.  And 
I  am  afraid  Billy  is  as  bad  as  the  rest.  I  recall  how  mis- 
erable I  was  in  the  presence  of  the  inscrutable  self-control 
of  Mr.  Broke  in  similar  circumstances.  Ah,  me !  the  tor- 
tures of  doubt  and  fear  I  endured,  and  all  the  time  my 
dear  Edmund  was  morbidly  afraid  of  giving  himself 
away !  But  believe  me,  my  dear  child,  you  could  not  wish 
for  a  better  augury  of  happiness.  When  you  have  come  to 
know  men  better  you  will  realize  that  the  staunchest  are 
those  who  strive  to  conceal  in  our  presence  the  depth  of 
the  feelings  with  which  they  regard  us." 

Miss  Wayling  had  no  reply  to  make  to  these  words  of 
solace,  yet  they  did  not  seem  to  take  away  her  gloom. 
At  Mrs.  Broke's  earnest  request  she  continued  to  stay  on 
at  Covenden.  The  kind  woman  was  never  tired  of  affirm- 
ing that  dear  Maud  was  a  seventh  daughter  to  her  and  a 
great  comfort  to  have  in  the  house.  She  declared  that  the 
other  six  were  in  the  nature  of  a  trial,  who  brought  little 
consolation  to  one  so  feminine  as  herself.     "  We  have  so 


I30  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

little  in  common,  my  dear  Maud.  They  are  so  unfem- 
inine;  they  ought  to  have  been  men.  I  really  don't  know 
what  I  should  have  done  had  you  been  like  them." 

Miss  Wayling  was  a  little  puzzled,  a  little  distressed  by 
the  fact  that  all  the  world  had  come  to  regard  her  as 
Billy's  fiancee.  Yet  in  a  vague  way  she  supposed  it  was 
all  right.  Colonel  Rouse,  her  guardian,  wrote  her  the 
kindest  letters.  He  congratulated  her  heartily  on  her 
good  fortune.  The  Brokes  were  a  most  charming  family. 
He  hardly  knew  how  to  express  his  delight  that  every- 
thing had  been  arranged  so  satisfactorily. 

Maud,  accustorned  to  depend  so  much  on  others — no 
princess  of  a  reigning  house  was  shielded  more  sedu- 
lously from  the  rubs  of  the  world — was  compelled  to  be- 
lieve that  the  whole  thing  was  in  order.  True,  Billy  had 
not  been  any  more  lavish  of  his  attention  of  late  than  had 
been  his  wont  formerly.  Ever  since  the  far-off  days  of 
their  first  coming  together,  nobody  had  seemed  so  in- 
different to  her  presence  as  was  he.  And  now  when  she 
had  the  temerity  to  hope  that  he  might  be  a  little  less 
austere  in  his  treatment  of  her,  he  seemed  to  bestow  no 
special  attention  upon  her,  and  sometimes  she  thought  he 
even  went  to  the  length  of  avoiding  her.  And  he  did  not 
favour  her  with  his  correspondence.  Yet  surely  he  must 
have  spoken  of  her  to  others ;  how  else  could  affairs  have 
reached  their  present  phase?  It  was  all  very  mysterious, 
but  she  supposed  that  everything  was  as  it  should  be, 
since  persons  of  the  widest  experience  and  the  deepest 
wisdom,  a  cabinet  of  her  chosen  ministers,  had  the  mat- 
ter in  hand  and  were  pledged  to  see  it  through. 

Still,  it  was  not  in  the  least  like  what  she  could  have 
wished  it  to  be.  Surely  every  man  could  not  affect  the 
aloofness  of  Billy,  and  observe  such  a  lordly  disregard 
for  the  object  of  his  affections.  There  was  too  much  of 
maiden  fancy  in  her  to  allow  her  to  think  for  a  moment 
that  it  was  the  universal  custom  for  marriage  to  be  en- 
tered upon  in  this  cold-blooded  manner.  Still,  in  many 
cases  it  must  be  so,  or  her  friends  would  have  been  alive 
to  the  phenomenon.     Somebody  must  have  told  her,  had 


A  WOMAN  OF  THE  WORLD  131 

it  been  altogether  unusual.  Every  day  brought  letters  of 
congratulation  from  her  friends.  The  announcement  in 
the  newspapers  had  been  seen  by  all.  One  or  two  of  her 
girl  friends  wrote  to  say  how  delightful  it  must  be  to  be 
in  love,  and  how  delightful  also  to  be  beloved  by  such  a 
perfect  dear  as  Billy  Broke.  One  tender  damsel  wanted 
to  know,  was  it  a  case  of  love  at  first  sight?  And  every- 
body agreed  that  she  must  be  quite  the  happiest  girl  in  the 
world. 

In  none  of  the  letters  she  wrote  in  reply,  not  even  in  that 
to  her  guardian,  from  whom  she  had  never  kept  a  secret 
before,  did  she  allow  herself  to  make  the  confession  that 
she  could  have  wished  her  engagement  to  be  a  more  ro- 
mantic affair.  She  was  too  proud  to  confess  to  anybody, 
almost  too  proud  to  confess  to  herself,  that  she  felt  her 
position  keenly.  Her  nature  was  too  sensitive  to  permit 
her  to  open  her  heart  to  others  and  let  them  see  how  and 
why  she  suffered.  The  one  crumb  of  solace  she  could  al- 
low herself  was  that  she  and  Billy  had  been  boy  and  girl 
together.  He  always  was  at  her  guardian's  in  his  school- 
days. She  was  compelled  to  admit,  as  it  were  for  her  own 
countenance,  that  familiarity  did  breed  contempt  in  a 
sense,  even  in  two  persons  engaged  to  be  married. 

In  the  meantime,  if  Billy  wrote  no  letters  to  Maud,  he 
sent  more  than  one  to  his  mother.  They  were  conceived 
in  rather  a  doleful  key.  He  complained  that  so  far  from 
people  allowing  the  distasteful  subject  to  drop  they  con- 
tinued to  insist  on  it  in  a  manner  that  was  really  becoming 
offensive.  All  the  world  took  it  for  granted  that  he  was 
actually  engaged.  Even  Maud's  guardian,  who  of  all 
men  should  have  been  well  informed,  treated  it  as  an  ac- 
complished fact.  Billy  did  not  know  when  he  had  been 
so  disturbed;  several  times  he  had  been  on  the  verge  of 
telling  the  old  fool  that  he  went  altogether  beyond  the 
mark.  He  exhorted  his  mother  to  write  at  once  to  Colonel 
Rouse.  He  himself  would  have  done  so,  only  it  was  the 
sort  of  thing  a  chap  avoided  if  he  possibly  could.  It 
made  you  feel  such  an  ass. 

In  several  of  these  ingenuous  letters  Billy  urged  upon  his 


132  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

mother  the  necessity  of  allaying  such  a  monstrously  false 
impression.  She  must  contradict  it  in  the  newspapers 
where  the  mischief  had  begun.  Moreover,  he  never  ceased 
to  assure  her  that  Maud  was  a  million  times  too  good  for 
a  s:hap  like  him. 

As  letter  succeeded  letter,  Mrs.  Broke  began  to  feel  that 
the  matter  was  entering  upon  a  difficult  phase.  She  had 
been  so  much  in  the  habit  of  wielding  an  unquestioned 
authority  over  her  family,  that  it  was  not  easy  for  her  to 
realize  that  her  beautifully  conceived  plans  for  its  welfare 
were  in  danger.  From  the  moment  the  young  man  had 
first  delighted  and  flattered  the  world  by  appearing  in  it 
he  had  been  humoured  in  all  things.  It  had  not  been 
thought  necessary  to  rear  the  godlike  youth  in  the  fashion 
of  his  sisters.  The  young  prince  is  the  young  prince. 
He  must  be  allowed  to  work  out  his  destiny  untrammelled 
by  the  checks  and  precepts  imposed  upon  humbler  mortals 
by  the  guardians  of  youth.  But  now  the  possibility  was 
beginning  to  take  shape  in  the  mind  of  the  hero's  mother 
that  such  a  latitude  had  not  been  altogether  wise. 

His  contrariness  had  merely  amused  her  at  first.  But 
now  she  was  growing  a  little  afraid.  Dating  from  her  last 
interview  with  the  young  man  she  was  haunted  with  the 
father's  capacity  for  unreason  which  she  was  now  able 
to  trace  so  clearly  in  the  son.  Here  was  a  factor  which 
might  spoil  everything.  The  intervention  of  an  hereditary 
despotism  was  capable  of  shattering  the  pleasant  scheme 
in  a  thousand  pieces.  Human  foresight  cannot  cope  with 
that.  From  the  moment  the  young  man  had  shown  signs 
of  the  fatal  tendency  the  wise  lady  had  not  slept  quite  so 
peacefully  at  night. 

Her  own  letters  to  him  had  been  very  tactfully  ex- 
pressed. She  had  been  careful  to  show  no  spark  of  resent- 
ment of  an  attitude  which  she  hinted  delicately  he  must 
know  to  be  perverse.  She  had  soothed  him,  humoured 
him,  neglected  no  means  of  reconciling  him  to  the  inevi- 
table. Now  and  again  she  appealed  tenderly  on  behalf 
of  the  maternal  relation  to  which  fate  had  appointed  her, 
and  with  beautiful  humility  besought  him  to  trust  to  her 


A  WOMAN  OF  THE  WORLD  133 

judgment  implicitly  because  she  was  acting  for  the  best, 
not  only  as  far  as  he  himself  was  concerned,  but  as  re- 
garded every  member  of  his  family.  If  it  were  possible 
she  desired  to  spare  him  the  excoriation  of  his  pride,  inci- 
dent upon  showing  him  that  what  the  whole  thing  really 
amounted  to  was  a  marriage  de  convenance.  She  had  a 
considerable  sense  of  delicacy.  Even  if  he  was  too  obtuse 
to  see  where  his  duty  lay,  she  had  yet  no  wish  to  wound 
him  by  insisting  upon  it  unduly.  But  even  that  course, 
a  little  degrading  as  it  was  perhaps,  must  be  taken  if  ''  her 
precious  "  did  not  soon  emerge  in  a  more  reasonable  light. 

She  wrote  several  letters  in  which  the  financial  position 
of  his  family  was  clearly  indicated,  and  one  at  least  that 
bore  a  veiled  reference  to  Maud's.  It  was  the  first  time 
that  so  crude  a  course  had  been  taken  with  the  young 
prince;  and  his  mother  felt  it  keenly.  She  had  a  slight 
sense  of  shame.  It  hurt  her  very  much  to  embarrass  her 
precious  with  these  rather  sordid  details.  But  it  has  to 
be  confessed  that  it  hurt  her  more  when  her  precious 
showed  no  disposition  to  be  embarrassed  by  them.  The 
letters  she  received  in  return  betrayed  a  well-bred  avoid- 
ance of  the  unpleasant  topic;  his  passing  over  of  the 
coarse  allusion  to  the  amount  of  Maud's  income  was 
equally  well  bred.  His  mother  grew  a  little  hurt  by  that 
which  in  another  might  have  seemed  like  callousness.  So 
acutely  did  it  touch  her,  that  she  even  went  to  the  length 
of  insinuating  veiled  charges  against  the  hero  of  misuse 
of  the  money  with  which  he  had  been  furnished  so  freely, 
and  of  extravagance  in  his  way  of  life.  It  was  a  charge 
that  none  had  dared  to  prefer  against  the  young  Apollo 
until  that  dark  hour.  He  replied  that  when  you  were  in 
the  Blues  you  had  to  do  as  the  Blues  did. 

Such  indications  of  high  policy  underlying  the  affair 
were  not,  however,  without  their  effect.  Billy's  letters 
of  protest  grew  less  frequent,  less  disconcertingly  frank. 
Thereupon  his  mother,  only  too  eager  to  find  a  favourable 
omen  in  this  modification  of  attitude,  wrote  a  very  prettily- 
worded  letter  for  his  benefit.  She  wished  to  know  when 
would  be  a  convenient  time  for  the  wedding.     Had  her 


134  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

precious  any  feeling  about  time  or  place?  If  so  he  had 
only  to  make  it  known.  But  it  was  becoming  essential 
that  something  should  be  settled  without  further  delay. 

To  these  pleasant  inquiries  there  came  no  reply.  Billy's 
epistolary  powers  gave  out  abruptly. 

After  a  week  of  silence  Mrs.  Broke  wrote  again  in  sim- 
ilar terms.  Another  week  went  by,  but  still  no  answer 
arrived  to  either  of  these  communications.  She  grew 
rather  uneasy.  It  was  not  Billy's  habit  to  be  silent.  He 
was  such  a  frank,  outspoken  creature  as  a  rule. 

By  the  time  three  weeks  had  gone  by  she  had  grown 
more  than  a  little  afraid.  To  say  the  least,  the  situation 
seemed  a  trifle  ominous.  She  could  hardly  believe  that 
Billy  would  prove  recalcitrant.  For  one  thing  she  didn't 
think  he  had  it  in  him.  But,  after  all,  heredity  could 
never  be  left  wholly  out  of  the  case.  In  the  background 
was  the  shadow  of  the  sire — of  that  sire  who  was  a  baf- 
fling mixture  of  easy  tolerance  and  frank  despotism. 
There  were  points  on  which  Edmund  could  be  the  most 
arbitrary  mian  alive.  He  belonged  to  a  race  that  was 
ridiculously  simple  to  deal  with  up  to  a  certain  point ;  but 
beyond  that  point  they  were  liable  to  get  the  bit  in  their 
teeth  and  take  charge.     History  had  recorded  instances. 

In  the  midst  of  these  rather  rueful  speculations  there 
came  a  letter  from  Billy  which  somewhat  sharply  resolved 
her  doubts. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

IN    WHICH   A   BOMB    IS   THROWN    RIGHT    INTO    THE    MIDDLE 
OF   THE   STORY 

IT  was  a  characteristic  production,  dated  "  Windsor, 
Wednesday,"  and  was  to  inform  his  mother  that  the 
previous  day  he  was  married  in  London. 

His  good  old  mummy  was  not  to  be  very  down  on  him, 
as  he  had  married  the  best  little  girl  in  all  the  world.  She 
was  to  break  the  news  to  his  father  when  he  was  in  a 
propitious  mood ;  "  after  dinner  when  he  had  a  good  day." 
He  hoped  his  good  old  mummy  would  not  judge  either  of 
them  hastily ;  she  must  first  see  his  dear  little  girl  before 
she  made  up  her  mind  about  her. 

It  was  well  perhaps  for  the  letter's  recipient  that  she 
could  claim  to  be  a  hard-bitten  woman  of  the  world.  An 
indomitable  clearness  of  vision,  a  certain  stoicism  of  spirit, 
and  a  resolute  looking  of  facts  in  the  face  had  grown  to 
be  a  kind  of  second  nature  with  her.  It  was  indeed  well 
that  she  was  not  accustomed  to  flinch  at  trifles,  for  if  in- 
stead of  making  that  communication  Billy  had  doubled 
his  fist  and  hit  out  with  all  his  strength,  he  could  not  have 
dealt  his  mother  a  fiercer  blow. 

It  was  at  the  breakfast-table  that  his  painful  operation 
had  occurred.  The  girls  were  laughing  and  talking,  and 
were  discussing  eagerly  the  proposed  incursion  of  the  field 
that  was  shortly  to  be  made;  they  were  also  eating  bacon 
and  drinking  coffee  in  a  very  fearless  manner.  Their  fa- 
ther was  reading  a  leading  article  in  The  Times,  and  was 
in  the  act  of  enunciating,  "  that  one  of  these  days  we 
shall  be  driven  to  take  decisive  action  in  the  Transvaal." 

135 


136  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

This  preoccupation  of  the  members  of  her  household 
served  Mrs.  Broke.  Any  agitation  she  might  have  shown 
excited  no  remark.  Presently,  however,  Broke,  casting 
the  newspaper  aside,  inquired  if  Billy  had  written  again, 
as  some  time  had  passed  since  his  previous  letter. 

"  No  he  has  not,"  said  Mrs.  Broke  placidly. 

At  the  earliest  moment  she  escaped  to  her  morning  room. 
In  that  security  she  read  again  her  son's  communication. 
Every  word  seemed  to  burn  itself  into  her  brain. 

Even  then  it  took  some  little  time  before  she  could  grasp 
with  any  sense  of  adequacy  all  the  facts  as  there  set  forth. 

If  words  meant  anything  Billy  was  married.  The  sig- 
nificance of  such  a  fact  was  too  wide-reaching  to  be  at 
once  understood.  But  in  the  first  place,  and  most  ob- 
viously, it  put  an  end  to  this  affair  with  Maud.  In  other 
words  it  meant  financial  ruin.  They  had  held  on  for  sev- 
eral years  with  no  other  prospect  than  Billy's  ultimate 
marriage  with  her.  Only  Mr.  Breffit  and  their  bankers 
knew  how  compromised  they  were.  Here  was  an  end  to 
that  pathetic  keeping  up  of  appearances;  that  perpetual 
seeking  of  ways  and  means,  that  perpetual  putting  off  of 
the  evil  day.  Even  her  husband  and  his  agent  did  not 
know  the  full  extent  of  the  difficulties  they  had  had  to  face. 
She  alone  knew  that,  and  she  alone  knew  why  they  had 
faced  them.     But  it  was  over  now. 

This  was  but  a  survey  of  her  first  fragmentary  thoughts. 
After  awhile  more  debris  floated  to  the  surface  of  her 
mind.  The  aspect  in  which  they  represented  the  matter 
might  not  be  so  final  in  one  sense,  but  in  another  it  was 
hardly  less  embarrassing  to  a  mother's  mind.  Billy  had 
withheld  certain  important  details  in  regard  to  the  per- 
son he  had  married.  It  was  true  that  he  allowed  her  to 
be  the  "  sweetest  little  girl  in  the  whole  world,"  but  even 
in  the  midst  of  the  revels  of  description  in  which  his 
idyllic  fancy  painted  her  charms  a  cold  feeling  came  over 
the  unhappy  lady  that  the  subject  of  them  might  turn  out 
to  be  a  housemaid. 

Of  course,  on  the  face  of  things  that  did  not  seem  prob- 
able.   After  all,  the  wretched  fellow  was  her  son  and  the 


IN  WHICH  A  BOMB  IS  THROWN  137 

son  of  his  father.  He  might  choose  to  ruin  his  family 
rather  than  submit  his  will  to  that  of  another,  but  it  was 
hardly  likely  that  he  would  wantonly  degrade  himself  and 
those  whom  he  held  dear.  But  as  she  pondered  the  ways 
of  young  men  with  a  tendency  to  wildness  in  them ;  when 
her  thoughts  reverted  twenty  years  back  to  the  tragi- 
comedy of  her  brother  Charles  and  the  star  of  the  Light 
Comedy  firmament,  she  was  fain  to  admit  that  there  were 
occasions  when  youth  would  indulge  its  foibles. 

There  was  really  no  saying  to  whom  he  was  married. 
But  at  least  the  chance  was  slight  that  his  wife  would  turn 
out  to  be  presentable.  No  girl  of  the  right  kind  would 
consent  to  be  whirled  into  matrimony  in  this  surreptitious 
fashion.  Her  friends  at  least  would  have  a  word  to  say 
on  the  subject. 

Most  probably  she  had  no  friends.  The  chances  were 
that  she  was  something  hopeless ;  a  chorus  girl,  a  barmaid, 
an  adventuress  of  one  kind  or  another,  who  taking  ad- 
vantage of  the  wretched  fellow's  frame  of  mind  had  clev- 
erly entrapped  him. 

After  an  hour  spent  in  deliberation  of  this  bitter  kind, 
Mrs.  Broke  sent  a  telegram  to  her  son :  "  Meet  me  at 
Aunt  Mary's  at  Mount  Street  this  afternoon.  Shall  wait 
until  you  come."  ,She  also  sent  a  telegram  to  her  sister 
to  say  that  she  was  coming  up  to  town  that  morning  on 
important  business.  She  was  essentially  a  woman  of  ac- 
tion. There  was  just  time  to  catch  the  ten-fifteen  train 
from  Cuttisham,.  Telling  Broke  briefly  that  she  had  to 
go  up  to  town,  and  that  she  might  have  to  stay  the  night 
at  Mount  Street,  the  redoubtable  lady  set  forth  on  her 
pilgrimage,  and  got  to  the  station  in  time  for  the  train. 

On  the  way  up  to  town,  in  a  compartment  she  had  to 
herself,  she  was  able  to  review  the  matter  again  at  her 
leisure.  Recurring  for  the  tenth  time  to  the  fatal  letter, 
she  grew  convinced  that  Billy  in  his  headlong  folly  and 
wilfulness  had  fallen  a  victim  to  one  who,  with  a  vague- 
ness that  was  wholly  admirable,  she  termed  an  adven- 
turess. And  assuming  that  to  be  the  case  all  was  not  yet 
lost.     It  was  well  known  that  that  kind  of  person  generally 


138  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

had  a  former  husband  in  the  background,  who  had  the 
trick  of  issuing  from  his  obscurity  at  a  dramatic  moment. 
When  this  happy  possibility  came  into  her  mind,  a  lurid 
picture  was  thrown  across  it  of  a  drunken  villain  spring- 
ing forward  to  levy  blackmail.  The  distressed  lady  had 
too  keen  a  sense  of  the  ludicrous  not  to  laugh  at  her  own 
extravagance  a  little;  but  when  one  is  suflFering  pain  of 
an  acute  kind  one  is  apt  to  seek  relief  in  the  contempla- 
tion of  weird  and  drastic  remedies. 


CHAPTER  XV 
l'egoIsme  a  deux 

HER  sister  Mary  was  the  wife  of  a  Cabinet  Minister 
and  was  famous  in  the  social  world.  She  was  a 
cheerful  soul,  an  amiable  savage  whose  odd  reputation 
for  philanthropy  entitled  her  to  a  place  in  a  museum,  as 
would  that  of  a  devil  fish  endowed  with  the  domestic 
affections.  Her  mission  in  life  seemed  to  be  to  open 
bazaars  for  charitable  objects ;  also  to  misrepresent  her 
face  and  person  by  the  aid  of  science,  and  afterwards  even 
more  sedulously  to  misrepresent  them  by  the  aid  of  the 
illustrated  press.  Notoriety  was  her  passion;  and  she 
went  about  doing  good,  attended  by  footman  and  re- 
porters and  the  applause  of  her  claque.  Her  appearance, 
which  owed  considerably  more  to  art  than  to  nature,  was 
as  familiar  as  that  of  royalty  itself  in  the  shops  of  Regent 
Street ;  and  almost  every  day  she  published  a  new  scheme 
in  the  newspapers — her  sworn  and  bosom  friends — for 
the  amelioration  of  the  human  race  and  the  animal  crea- 
tion. She  was  the  perpetual  president  of  that  famous 
and  old-established  Society  for  Providing  the  Basutos  with 
Red  Braces. 

The  strain  of  keeping  in  the  centre  of  the  public  eye 
had  made  her  prematurely  old.  It  was  an  open  secret 
that  she  used  belladonna  to  brighten  her  eyes,  and  cocaine 
to  brighten  her  intellect.  She  kept  the  best  cook  and  the 
worst  company  in  London.  Her  claim  to  distinction  in 
her  own  set  was  that  she  was  the  only  woman  in  it  who 
had  been  able  to  retain  the  husband  with  whom  fate  had 
decorated  her.  She  was  known  to  fame  as  the  Honour- 
able Mrs.  Twysden-Cockshot,  and  her  husband  the  Right 
Honourable    Reginald,   the    President   of   the    Board   of 

139 


140  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

Supererogation,  had  not  put  his  foot  over  the  threshold 
of  his  wife's  residence  in  Mount  Street  for  thirteen  years. 
He  divided  his  time  between  the  House  of  Commons  and 
his  club.  In  the  popular  magazines,  however,  the  satis- 
faction was  his  of  seeing  his  name  included  among  those 
of  the  fortunate  many  who  owed  their  success  in  life  to 
their  wives.  He  could  also  have  added,  which  he  was 
much  too  chivalrous  to  do,  that  he  was  qualifying  to 
have  his  name  added  to  the  list  of  those  who  owed  to  their 
wives  their  appearance  in  the  Court  of  Bankruptcy. 
However,  he  was  no  longer  responsible  for  her  debts. 

To  Mount  Street  came  Mrs.  Broke  in  her  distress.  She 
only  went  to  poor  dear  Mary's  when  there  were  no  houses 
sweeter  in  repute  to  afford  sanctuary.  The  name  of  Aunt 
Mary  was  seldom  mentioned  in  the  family  of  Covenden. 
She  belonged  to  the  category  of  those  of  whom  one  does 
not  speak  unless  one  is  obliged.  Still  there  were  occasions 
when  Aunt  Mary  and  more  especially  Aunt  Mary's  house 
had  their  uses.  To-day  the  latter  chanced  to  occupy  this 
fortunate  position  in  the  eyes  of  Mrs.  Broke. 

When  Mrs.  Broke  arrived  at  Mount  Street  on  the  stroke 
of  twelve  she  was  glad  to  find  that  her  sister  was  abroad 
in  the  world  already  and  was  not  expected  home  to 
luncheon.  She  was  in  no  mood  to  cope  with  her  just 
then.  All  the  afternoon  she  sat  in  the  drawing-room 
waiting  for  the  coming  of  Billy.  Her  impatience  she 
strove  to  allay  with  attempts  at  reading.  A  few  minutes 
before  five  he  was  announced. 

"  Ha,  old  mums ! "  he  said,  with  his  habitual  arrogant 
cheeriness,  "  so  here  we  are !  " 

"  Will  you  have  a  cup  of  tea,  my  precious?  " 

Her  accents  were  as  prodigiously  sweet  as  when  he  had 
interviewed  her  last. 

"  Thanks  aw'fly." 

Mrs.  Broke  watched  him  a  little  curiously  while  he  put 
cream  and  sugar  in  his  tea,  stirred  it,  and  drank  it,  and 
noted  that  his  self-possession  was  as  perfect  as  her  own. 
Then  she  said: 

"  What  did  you  mean  by  that  rather  stupid  letter  you 


L'fiGOISME  A  DEUX  141 

sent  me  this  morning?  Do  you  know  you  rather  alarmed 
me,  my  lamb  ?  " 

"  It  was  bit  sudden,  wasn't  it  ?  "  said  the  young  man. 

"  What  was  a  bit  sudden,  my  precious  ?  " 

"  That  letter." 

"  Really  one  can  hardly  say  that.  It  was  three  whole 
weeks  since  you  wrote  before." 

"  Was  it  so  long  as  that  ?  I  didn't  think  it  was  so 
long ;  how  the  time  does  get  on,  doesn't  it  ?  " 

"  It  does,  my  love,"  said  his  mother,  widening  her  eyes 
and  beaming  upon  him  steadily. 

Billy  met  them  with  imperturbability.  He  rubbed  one 
hand  cautiously  round  his  silk  hat. 

"  I  think,  mummy,  I'll  have  another  cup  of  tea.  The 
tea  is  very  nice." 

"  Yes,  darling."  ^ 

Mrs.  Broke  continued  to  look  at  her  son  steadily.  The 
smile  was  still  in  her  eyes;  her  voice  was  low  and  calm 
and  under  very  great  control. 

"  What  did  you  mean  precisely,  my  darling,  by  that 
ridiculous  assertion  that  you  were  married  yesterday 
morning  ?  " 

"  Ridiculous !  "  said  Billy  easily.  "  Why  ridiculous, 
mummy?  I  don't  quite  see  how  the  truth  can  be  ridicu- 
lous." 

*'  Then  it  is  true,  my  dear  one  ?  " 

"  Of  course.     I  wouldn't  pull  your  leg  like  that." 

"  And  who,  pray,  is  the  favoured  person  ?  " 

There  was  the  half-smile  still  lurking  in  the  cool  blue 
eyes.  There  was  the  same  suggestion  of  slight  amusement 
with  which  she  had  begun  the  conversation. 

"  She's  a  peach,"  said  Billy. 

"Who,  my  love?" 

"  A  peach."^ 

"  I  don't  think  I  know  the  family.  I  believe  there  are 
some  people  called  Mowbray  Peach  in  Warwickshire. 
But  I  cannot  say  that  I  enjoy  the  pleasure  of  their  ac- 
quaintance." 

**  I  don't  mean  people  at  all,  you  dear  old  thing,"  said 


142  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

Billy,  laughing  heartily.  "  A  peach — a  regular  picture, 
you  know.  Something  sweet  and  tempting  and  good  to 
look  at." 

"  And  who  is  this  person,  my  love,  who  is  sweet  and 
tempting  and  good  to  look  at  ?  " 

"  My  wife,"  said  Billy,  taking  his  hat  off  one  knee  and 
placing  it  on  the  other. 

"  Of  course,  my  love.  But  who  was  she  before  she  was 
your  wife?  " 

The  young  man  paused.  He  carefully  put  back  his  hat 
on  his  other  knee. 

"  You  must  promise,  my  dear  old  mums,"  he  said,  after 
due  reflection,  *'  that  if  I  tell  you,  you  will  not  be  preju- 
diced and  so  on.  You  must  promise  me  that  you  will  not 
despise  her  for  what  she  has  been." 

"  I  am  afraid  I  cannot  enter  into  any  promises  of  that 
kind,  my  darling." 

"  Then  I  am  afraid  I  cannot  tell  you,  my  dear." 

Mother  and  son  found  themselves  looking  fixedly  at 
one  another.  It  was  the  first  time  in  their  lives  that  they 
had  found  themselves  afflicted  with  a  sense  of  antagonism 
in  their  personal  relations.  It  was  as  sudden  as  it  was 
unforeseen.  In  spite  of  the  mantle  of  her  stoicism,  the 
redoubtable  lady  felt  a  curious  little  shiver  in  her  veins. 
She  was  face  to  face  with  a  lifelong  error.  From  the  day 
of  his  birth  she  had  thought  she  knew  all  there  was  to 
know  about  Billy.  Here  and  now  she  was  confronted  with 
the  knowledge  of  how  completely  she  had  deceived  her- 
self. 

"  I  promise,  my  darling,"  she  said  humbly. 

"  Bible  oath,  you  know,  old  mums,"  said  Billy,  with  a 
short  laugh. 

"  Don't  be  silly,  my  pet.  I  am  not  in  the  habit  of  mak- 
ing promises  unless  I  intend  to  keep  them." 

"  No,  of  course.  But  you  see,  she  is  my  wife  now,  and 
— er — I  may  be  a  bit  sensitive  for  her,  don't  you  know. 
She's  mine,  don't  you  know;  and  if  I  thought  anybody 
was  going  to  cross  her,  or  annoy  her,  or  make  her  feel 
miserable  they  should  not  see  her,  mummy,  do  you  see  ?  " 


L'EGOISME  A  DEUX  143 

"  Lucidity  itself,  my  pet.  But  why,  may  I  ask,  should 
I  of  all  people,  your  own  foolish  old  mother,  who  has 
doted  on  you  all  your  life,  be  likely  to  act  like  this  towards 
the — the — er — person  you  have  chosen  to  marry  ?  " 

"  I  certainly  don't  know  why  you  should.  But  one  don't 
always  quite  know  where  one  is  with  you,  you  wily  old 
woman ;  and  if  you  don't  mind  my  saying  it,  you  dear  old 
mummy,  you  can  be  very  down  on  people  when  you  like. 
I've  seen  you  give  those  poor  kid  sisters  o'  mine  *  gyp/  I 
can  tell  you.  Oh,  I  know  you!  Now  this  dear  little  kid 
of  mine  is  the  sweetest  little  girl  in  the  world  and  the 
best ;  and  if  even  I  allowed  my  dear  old  mummy  to  come 
along  and  make  her  pretty  eyes  red  for  her,  I  should  never 
forgive  myself." 

"  You  speak  in  riddles,  my  dear  one.  Why  or  how  I 
should  make  the  pretty  eyes  of  the — the — er — person  red, 
I  fail  to  understand.  May  I  ask,  she  is  not  one  of  those 
fashionable  persons  who  have  a  past  ?  " 

"  Lord,  no ! "  said  Billy,  with  vehemence.  He  placed 
"his  hat  on  the  carpet  out  of  the  way  of  danger.  "  What 
a  rotten  thing  to  say,  mummy !  " 

"  It  was,  my  pet,"  said  his  mother,  with  beautiful  hu- 
mility. "  I  am  sure  I  beg  your  pardon.  But,  really,  you 
alarm  me  so  with  your  hums  and  haws,  that  I  hardly  know 
how  to  place  her.  Come  now,  my  dear  one,  please  reveal 
to  me  in  just  two  plain  words  who  this  person  is  I  under- 
stand you  to  have  married." 

"  Well,  if  you  must  know,  she  is  a  little  girl  out  of 
Perkin  and  Warbeck's  shop  in  Bond  Street,  the  right-hand 
side,  you  know,  going  out  of  Piccadilly." 

"  Thank  you,  my  darling,  that  is  all  I  wished  to  know." 

There  was  not  a  flicker  in  the  smiling  face.  Perhaps 
the  lips  were  a  little  tighter  than  was  their  wont.  They 
were  drawn  in  until  her  mouth  was  set  in  a  sharp  straight 
line.  Billy  thought  he  had  never  seen  the  hard  lights 
dance  quite  so  quickly  and  so  luminously  in  her  eyes.  As 
he  looked  at  her  he  could  not  help  feeling  that  his  mother 
was  magnificent. 

"  Mummy,  you  are  rather  a  brick."    The  admiration  in 


144  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

his  voice  was  part  of  the  frankness  he  always  allowed 
himself. 

"  Will  you  have  another  cup  of  tea,  my  lamb  ?  There 
is  just  one  left,  I  think,  if  it  is  not  too  cold." 

"  Thank  you  very  much,"  said  Billy,  "  I  think  I  will." 

He  picked  up  his  hat  again  and  placed  it  a  little  farther 
out  of  the  way  of  danger.  His  mother  poured  out  his 
third  cup  of  tea  and  presented  it  to  him  with  a  hand  that 
did  not  shake. 

"  I  suppose,  my  angel,"  she  said  in  a  low,  matter-of-fact 
voice,  "  you  know  that  you  have  ruined  us  all  ?  " 

"  Oh,  rot,  mummy ! "  said  the  young  man  cheerfully. 
"You  mustn't  talk  like  that,  you  know.  You  are  not 
going  to  take  on  about  it;  you  are  much  too  sensible  an 
old  bird." 

"  We  are  ruined  completely  and  effectually." 

"  You  mustn't  talk  like  that,  you  know.  I  took  a  bold 
step,  but  it  doesn't  mean  that,  I  am  sure.  She  is  such  a 
good  little  girl." 

*'  Our  very  existence  depended  on  your  marriage  with 
Maud.  We  are  hopelessly  compromised  in  a  financial 
sense,  and  now  in  a  social  one " 

"  Suppose  you  don't  say  it  ?  "  said  Billy,  with  a  coaxing 
air. 

"  Very  well,  my  precious,  I  will  not.  But  I  think  it 
right  that  you  should  be  brought  face  to  face  with  the 
state  of  affairs  in  which  your  somewhat  unfortunate,  not 
to  say  hasty,  act  has  involved  us." 

"  Whether  it  is  unfortunate  or  not,  mummy,  remains  to 
be  seen,  but  in  any  case  you  can  hardly  call  it  hasty.  I 
had  been  thinking  of  it  for  some  little  time,  but  I'll  admit 
that  when  this  business  of  Maud  came  along  it  may  have 
forced  my  hand  a  bit.  But  now  I've  taken  the  plunge 
I've  sort  of  made  my  bed,  don't  you  know,  and — and  why, 
there  you  are !  " 

"  I  don't  doubt,  my  love,  that  what  you  say  is  perfectly 
true;  but  may  I  ask  why  you  did  not  take  me  into  your 
confidence  at  any  rate  before  you  embarked  on  such  a 
step?" 


L^EGOISME  A  DEUX  145 

"  I  hope,  you  dear  old  thing,  you  didn't  expect  me  to  be 
such  a  juggins?  There  would  have  been  an  awful  fuss; 
besides,  I  was  obliged  to  keep  it  from  the  regiment.  It 
was  a  rather  ticklish  affair,  I  don't  mind  telling  you." 

Mrs.  Broke  drew  in  her  breath  in  several  sharp  little 
gasps. 

"  Do  you  quite  think  you  ought  to  congratulate  your- 
self, my  darling?"  she  asked  a  little  wearily. 

''  It's  a  day's  work  I  wouldn't  undo." 

*'  Then  you  are  wholly  insensible,  my  angel,  to  the  dis- 
grace and  ruin  of  your  family?" 

"  There  you  go,  mummy,"  said  Billy,  with  pathos, 
"  making  a  fuss !     I  wish  now  I  hadn't  told  you." 

"  You  must  please  forgive  me,  my  dear  one,"  said  his 
mother,  with  winning  humility. 

All  the  same  at  that  moment,  had  she  held  a  lethal 
weapon  in  her  hand,  she  might  conceivably  have  slain  her 
son.  Not  only  was  she  crushed  to  earth  by  the  realiza- 
tion of  her  worse  fears — a  girl  out  of  Perkin  and  War- 
beck's  shop  in  Bond  Street  belonged  emphatically  to  the 
category  of  the  "  hopeless  "  without  even  the  saving  clause 
of  an  adventuress  with  a  husband  to  levy  blackmail — but 
at  the  same  time  she  was  bitterly  angry.  The  young  man's 
obstinacy  she  could  understand,  but  his  reckless  folly  was 
hard  to  forgive. 

Still,  she  was  a  woman  of  insight.  And  she  recognized 
that  such  a  self -absorption  was  not  altogether  remarkable 
in  one  bred  in  Billy's  particular  school.  The  power  was 
hers  to  look  at  things  in  a  detached  and  impartial  way. 
She  knew  that  Billy  as  herself,  her  husband,  her  kindred 
and  the  great  majority  of  the  privileged  people  among  whom 
her  lot  had  been  cast,  were  only  too  apt  to  see  things  from 
one  angle  of  vision.  Full  many  an  instance  of  an  almost 
wolfish  self-centredness  had  she  found  in  her  gilded  sem- 
inary. At  times  she  had  been  a  little  appalled  by  these 
naive  worshippers  at  the  shrine  of  self.  There  seemed 
to  be  a  subtle  poison  in  the  atmosphere  they  breathed. 
It  was  only  to  be  expected  of  Billy,  who  was  blood  of  their 
blood,  bone  of  their  bone,  that  he  should  be  too  much  at 


146  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

the  mercy  of  his  own  immediate  point  of  view  to  spare 
a  thought  to  that  of  people  who  had  a  right  to  look  for 
some  little  consideration  at  his  hands.  She  had  the 
strength  to  admit,  even  in  that  dark  hour,  that  after  all 
his  cruel  egotism  was  not  so  very  remarkable.  She  would 
not  blame  him  for  that.  It  was  his  mad  infatuation,  his 
desperate  folly,  for  which  cheerfully  she  could  have  slain 
him. 

**  May  I  ask,  my  precious,  what  you  propose  to  do  with 
your  wife  now  you  have  married  her  ?  "  she  said  in  the 
tone  of  gentleness  she  had  used  from  the  beginning. 

"  I  don't  quite  know,  as  yet.  I  suppose  we  shall  rub 
along." 

"  I  confess,  my  darling,  that  I  foresee  obstacles  rising 
in  your  path." 

"  I  was  afraid  there  might  be  one  or  two.  Have  you  told 
my  father  yet  ?  " 

"  I  have  not  told  him.  And  to  be  perfectly  candid  I 
hardly  dare  to  tell  him.  Unless  I  misjudge  your  father 
completely  he  will  make  a  tragedy  of  it." 

"  Yes,  he  has  rather  the  reputation  of  being  an  eccentric 
in  some  things.  I  think,  mummy,  it  may  be  wise  to  break 
the  news  to  him  a  bit." 

"  I  agree  with  you,  my  darling.  And  I  beg  you  to  leave 
the  matter  in  my  hands.  Nothing  must  be  done  in  haste. 
There  is  poor  Maud  to  think  of.  One  hardly  knows  how 
to  face  all  the  consequences.  One  must  have  time  to 
think  this  thing  out  at  one's  leisure.  Do  not  speak  of  it 
to  anyone.  Our  social  credit  is  at  stake.  Something  is 
due  to  us  as  a  family.  Your  poor  sisters  may  be  preju- 
diced. We  may  have  to  submit  to  derision.  I  must 
charge  you  to  absolute  secrecy,  my  precious;  you  must 
place  the  affair  in  my  hands  unreservedly." 

The  young  man  assented  with  a  slight  feeling  of  relief. 
He  was  not  so  far  gone  in  his  infatuation  as  to  have  lost 
entirely  his  sense  of  proportion.  He  foresaw  that  it  would 
be  a  bitter  pill  for  his  world  to  swallow.  He  was  prompt 
td  acquiesce  therefore  in  his  mother's  request.  It  took 
the  burden  of  a  rather  irksome  duty  off  his  shoulders. 


UfiGOISME  A  DEUX  147 

He  could  not  help  admiring  his  mother.  She  might 
smile  forever  and  talk  in  tones  of  honey,  but  she  couldn't 
deceive  him.  He  knew  she  was  badly  hit.  He  had  never 
seen  a  more  finished  piece  of  acting  than  he  had  been 
treated  to  this  afternoon.  It  was  no  mean  exhibition  of 
the  art  because  he  guessed  she  had  been  knocked  about 
pretty  severely  by  the  blow  he  had  dealt  her,  and  now, 
however  composed  she  might  appear,  she  was  really  shat- 
tered and  trembling  from  the  consequences  of  it,  and 
was  bleeding  fiercely  underneath  her  laugh. 

"  I  must  write  to  your  wife,  or  call  upon  her,  my  dear 
one.     Where  is  she  living  at  present  ?  " 

Billy  hesitated.     He  looked  at  his  mother  searchingly. 

"Honest  Injun,  mummy?  You  can  be  trusted  with 
her?     She's  a  timid  little  soul." 

"  Yes,  my  darling,  you  can  trust  me." 

"  Well — er — the  address  is  17  Cromwell  Villas,  Hamp- 
den Road,  London,  N." 

**  Write  it  down,  my  love." 

"  Here  is  a  business  card  with  it  printed  on  it.  She 
lives  with  an  aunt  who  is  a  dressmaker,  but  I'm  looking 
out  for  a  little  box  for  her  in  the  country." 

Billy  took  out  his  cigarette-case,  and  selecting  from  it 
a  piece  of  pasteboard,  not  particularly  clean,  with  some 
printing  upon  it,  gave  it  to  his  mother.  She  accepted  it 
with  the  same  outward  composure,  although  it  revolted 
her  a  little  as  her  fingers  touched  it. 

Sworn  to  perfect  secrecy,  Billy  presently  left  his  mother 
to  catch  his  train.  Mrs.  Broke  having  decided  to  remain 
in  town  that  night,  sent  a  telegram  to  Covenden.  She 
then  surrendered  herself  to  her  aching  thoughts.  She 
was  a  woman  of  courage,  but  as  she  sat  alone  in  that 
huge  drawing-room  lit  with  dim  lamps,  with  the  silence 
and  the  loneliness  emphasizing  the  beatings  of  her  heart, 
she  had  that  dull  sense  of  calamity  that  afflicts  the  railway 
passenger,  who  having  gone  to  sleep  in  the  night  mail, 
awakes  with  a  shock  to  find  himself  buried  in  a  void  of 
debris  and  darkness  and  the  icy  air  freezing  the  sweat  upon 
his  face.     She  had  now  passed  from  the  first  phase  of 


148  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

semi-consciousness  of  this  hapless  traveller  to  one  of  a 
slowly-maturing  sensibility :  when  the  questions,  "  Where 
am  I  ?  What  has  happened  to  me  ?  "  have  given  place  to 
"  I  wonder  if  I  am  mortally  hurt ;  I  hope  there  is  nothing 
internal;  I  suppose  this  wet  stuff  trickling  into  my  eyes 
must  be  blood ! "  Mrs.  Broke  knew  the  nature  of  her 
accident;  she  was  now  trying  to  find  out  just  what  her 
injuries  were. 

This  she  could  not  do.  She  knew  positively  that  she 
was  severely  mauled ;  she  felt  as  though  she  was  going  to 
die;  but  her  predicament  was  so  strange,  that  she  could 
not  say  what  the  immediate  future  had  in  store.  Her  fine 
scheme  for  the  restoration  of  the  fortunes  of  her  house 
had  been  shattered  to  pieces  in  the  very  moment  of  its 
culmination.  She  had  been  congratulated ;  her  wisdom  and 
her  cleverness  had  been  extolled;  she  had  been  the  object 
of  envy;  but  as  she  had  raised  the  cup  to  her  lips  it  had 
been  wantonly  dashed  to  the  ground  in  a  calculated  heart- 
lessly cruel  and  ironical  manner. 

She  might  have  forgiven  the  author  of  the  act  had  it 
been  one  of  impulse;  there  is  hardly  any  act  too  insane 
to  be  unpardonable  in  the  sight  of  the  human  mother. 
But  it  had  proved  to  be  a  calculated  blow  in  which  her 
son  exulted.  He  had  married  this  creature  in  the  clear 
and  full  assurance  that  she  alone  had  the  power  to  make 
an  appeal  to  his  nature. 

It  was  singular  that  young  men  should  be  subject  to 
such  wild  hallucinations  as  these.  Bitterly  she  recalled 
the  parallel  case  of  her  brother  Charles.  On  that  occa- 
sion his  friends  learned  in  time  of  the  disaster  which 
threatened  him  and  were  able  to  rescue  him  from  the 
hands  of  the  sordid  vulgarian  who  had  hypnotized  him 
with  her  animal  beauty.  Mrs.  Broke  was  sconvinced  that 
a  similar  thing  had  happened  to  Billy,  only  in  his  case 
there  was  the  important  reservation  that  the  gods  had  not 
thought  fit  to  intervene.  As  usual  they  were  on  the  side 
of  the  big  battalions.  Charles's  family  was  strong  enough 
even  to  withstand  the  social  ruin  of  its  eldest  son.    Billy's 


L'EGOlSME  A  DEUX  149 

was  not.  Be  sure  the  malicious  gods  had  taken  those 
facts  into  their  consideration! 

She  had  made  up  her  mind  already  that  the  young 
woman  whose  local  habitation  was  Cromwell  Villas,  Hamp- 
den Road,  London,  N.,  would  prove  as  unspeakable  as 
Miss  Maisie  Malone  herself.  However,  she  would  go 
and  see  her.  Maimed  as  she  was  she  still  had  spirit 
enough  to  be  faintly  amused  at  Billy's  solicitude.  His 
anxiety  for  the  fine  feelings  of  "  the  dearest  little  girl  in 
the  world  "  would  have  been  true  comedy  from  the  stalls 
at  the  play.  Real  life,  it  seemed,  was  still  hard  to  beat  as 
a  dramatist.  But  she  would  go  and  see  for  herself.  For 
she  still  clung  with  frantic  tenacity  to  her  last  straw;  an 
impalpable,  vague,  ridiculous  straw,  but  a  straw  undoubt- 
edly. There  was  still  the  faint  hope  that  the  creature 
might  turn  out  to  be  an  "  adventuress,"  with  a  husband  in 
the  background,  although  that  belonged  rather  to  the 
transpontine  theatre.  Real  life,  however,  has  been  known 
on  occasion  to  turn  its  hand  to  melodrama.  But  her  hopes 
in  that  direction  had  been  weakened  already.  Doubtless 
the  creature  would  prove  to  be  a  person  of  a  hopeless 
propriety.  Doubtless  she  was ;  even  very  young  men  don't 
marry  the  other  kind;  after  all  the  virtue  of  the  lower 
order  is  their  only  safeguard.  Hence  their  classical 
maxim.     Honesty  is  the  best  policy. 

Fortunately  the  musings  of  the  galled  and  suffering 
lady  were  interrupted  at  this  point.  Her  sister  Mary 
flounced  into  the  room,  an  emanation  of  rustles  and 
odours.  She  was  marvellously  "  smart "  and  quite  un- 
daunted in  energy,  notwithstanding  that  in  the  course  of 
the  day  she  had  opened  three  bazaars  in  outlying  parts  of 
the  metropolis,  had  presided  at  the  half-yearly  administra- 
tion of  the  Fund  for  Providing  Distressed  Society  Women 
with  Diamond  Tiaras,  and  had  presently  to  dine  with  a 
Labour  Member  at  the  Carlton  Hotel.  Her  appearance, 
in  the  shrewd  and  merciless  eyes  of  her  sister,  was  de- 
cidedly second-rate. 

"  Hullo,  my  sister ! "  she  shouted  at  the  top  of  a  voice 


150  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

that  was  not  altogether  pleasant.  *'  You  here !  Two  cups. 
Aha,  a  man  to  tea!  Fie,  you  skittish  matron.  Glad  I 
was  out.  Sorry  I  came  back.  Hope  I  did  not  disturb  a 
tete-a-tete.  Are  these  the  legs  of  a  man  I  see  before  me, 
protruding  from  under  the  sofa?  No;  only  my  romantiq 
fancy.  I  wonder,  my  dear,  if  I  shall  ever  get  rid  of  my 
eternal  youth." 

**  I  think,  my  dear,  you  may  hope  in  time  sufficiently  to 
disguise  it,"  purred  Mrs.  Broke  as  she  looked  her  over 
placidly. 

"  Ha !  you  darling  old  cat,  you  keep  your  claws  as  sharp 
as  ever.  What's  your  game  now  ?  Money,  sordid,  humili- 
ating pelf,  or  has  Juno  come  to  ask  Minerva,  '  What  Shall 
We  Do  with  our  Daughters  ? '  Were  you  the  '  Mater- 
f amilias  '  who  started  the  correspondence  in  The  Times?  " 

"  No,  my  dear,  but  I  think  if  I  chose  I  could  furnish 
the  name  of  the  Constant  Reader  who  started  the  previous 
one,  'What  Shall  We  Do  With  Our  Husbands?'" 

"  It  is  no  good,  sister.  I  shall  not  compete.  You  are 
too  quick  in  the  uptake.  When  is  Billy  going  to  the 
altar?" 

"  Nothing  is  settled  yet." 

"  High  time,  isn't  it  ?  The  thing  has  been  lagging  super- 
fluous for  at  least  a  month.  I  saw  the  hero  at  the  Savoy 
the  other  night  after  the  play.  He  was  not  aggressively 
sober.  A  man  laid  me  five  to  four  in  ponies  that  he 
would  be  another  Charles.  I  took  him  on  the  nail;  they 
don't  know  the  mamma  of  ce  preux  chevalier,  do  they? 
How  much  is  the  Fair  Persian  worth — three  millions  or 
two?  A  nice  domesticated  creature,  with  no  expensive 
tastes,  I  understand.  Our  hero,  straight  out  of  Ouida 
though  he  be,  will  never  be  able  to  spend  all  that  on  polo 
ponies.  How  will  he  manage  to  dispose  of  it?  Can  you 
tell  me,  my  dear?  I  suppose  numerous  deserving  chari- 
ties will  benefit." 

"  I  refer  you  to  Reginald,  my  dear.  He  sits  at  the  feet 
of  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer.  I  do  not  pretend  to 
a  knowledge  of  finance." 

"  Ha,  there  you  go  again !     I  don't  know  when  your 


L'fiGOlSME  A  DEUX  151 

claws  were  so  sharp.  Still,  it  was  a  bit  below  the  belt. 
But  really,  my  dear,  I  must  hit  somebody.  I  am  in  a 
frightful  temper." 

"Settling  day?" 

"  Not  at  all." 

"  The  horrid  Mr.  Samuel  Moses  refuses  to  defer  his 
bill  of  sale?" 

"  How  did  you  guess  ?  " 

"  Intuition,  my  dear — the  feminine  prerogative." 

"  Well,  you  are  not  on  the  target.  No,  the  fact  is  I 
have  been  having  a  lot  of  bad  luck  lately." 

"Baccarat?" 

"Bookies.  I  have  forsaken  the  sport  of  princes  for 
the  sport  of  kings.  I  don't  know  when  I  have  been  so 
angry.  I  had  the  dead  straight  from  Harry  to  back 
Parable  for  the  Nash  at  hundred  to  eight.  I  wired  to  my 
bookie,  but  got  a  bit  mixed  in  the  code.  Parable  rolled 
home  all  right,  but  Bookie  repudiates,  and  refuses  point- 
blank  to  tip  up  the  spondulicks.  What  would  you  do, 
darling?    You  have  a  reputation  for  wisdom." 

"  I  confess,  my  dear,  that  your  conversation  is  too  tech- 
nical to  be  followed  except  by  the  expert.  You  out- 
Charles  poor  dear  Charles.  Do  I  understand  you  to  refer 
to  the  Turf?" 

"  Alas !  my  sister,  I  see  you  are  in  no  mood  to  humour 
my  frailties.  And  I  am  so  cross.  I  mentioned  it  to  old 
Justice  Sharp  last  night.  He  said  that  if  I  went  to  law, 
and  the  judge  happened  to  be  unusually  inexperienced  or 
unusually  senile,  and  I  wore  my  new  thing  of  Raquin's,  a 
pork  pie,  trimmed  with  green  mousseline  de  sole,  out  of 
which  issue  a  brace  of  crushed-strawberry  turtle  doves 
rampant,  from  a  pale  yellow  ground  slightly  erased,  which 
he  had  already  had  occasion  to  admire,  I  might  get  my 
verdict,  always  providing  that  the  judge  was  not  a  natu- 
ralist. In  that  event,  he  said,  I  should  be  committed  for 
contempt  and  get  five  years." 

"  When  does  Reginald  introduce  his  Bill,  my  dear,  for 
the  suppression  of  judicial  humour?" 

"  How  I  wish,  my  sister,  that  you  would  keep  King 


152  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

Charles's  head  out  of  the  conversation.  But  I  don't  want 
to  drag  Bookie  to  a  court  of  law;  you  are  acquainted, 
darling,  with  my  horror  of  publicity.  Besides,  if  I  did, 
it's  a  thousand  to  five,  to  lay  Charles's  favourite  odds, 
that  the  Nonconformist  What-you-call-it  would  not  let  me 
open  any  more  bazaars.  Really,  unprotected  women  in 
the  vast  metropolis  cannot  be  too  careful.  Oh,  by  the 
way,  thank  you  so  much  for  your  tip  about  Mars  and 
Jupiter  Railways  that  you  had  from  that  Salmon  man, 
your  neighbour.  Very  thoughtful,  my  dear.  That  fish  is 
quite  an  original.  I  hear  he  is  absolutely  straight.  Oh, 
and  tell  me,  my  dear,  what  is  this  about  our  dear  old  Ed- 
mund, our  dear  stiflf-backed,  blue-blooded,  simple-minded, 
penny  novelettish  feudal  baron  about  to  become  a  guinea 
pig!  When  I  saw  his  name  in  the  prospectus  in  this 
morning's  paper  with  only  two  of  his  initials  wrong,  I 
nearly  threw  a  fit.  A  sordid  age,  my  dear.  E.  W.  A. 
C.  B.  Broke,  Esquire,  j.p.,  d.l.,  Covenden,  Parkshire,  gen- 
tleman. A  sordid  age.  I  suppose  all  his  ancestors  have 
turned  in  their  tombs  in  Covenden  church  already.  I 
suppose  the  Broke  ghost  is  walking  in  the  east  wing.  It 
makes  one  shudder,  and  yet  I  protest  there  is  a  touch  of 
the  sublime.  Poor  dear  old  Edmund;  and  they  say  this 
is  not  an  age  of  heroes!  I  must  have  a  frame  for  that 
prospectus.  It  marks  an  epoch.  The  old  order  does  not 
merely  change,  it  wipes  itself  out.  And  so  fell  Broke  of 
Covenden  and  with  him  the  race  of  England's  gentlemen ! 
"  How  is  our  dear  old  Charley  One  ?  I  haven't  seen 
him  for  an  age.  Please  give  him  my  love,  and  tell  him  his 
last  keg  of  whisky  poisoned  the  housekeeper's  cat.  Tell 
him  Mountain  Mist's  the  tipple.  Ask  him  to  mention  my 
name,  and  to  give  an  order  to  Johnson,  Boswell,  and  Scott, 
Carlyle  Yard,  Bermondsey.  You  had  better  not  tell  him 
though,  my  sister,  that  I  have  a  twenty-five  per  cent  com- 
mission on  every  order  that  I  get,  or  he  will  be  demanding 
discount.  And  how  are  the  *  little  chestnut  fillies  '  ?  Are 
they  as  fond  of  bacon,  and  as  lean  and  as  leggy,  and  as 
nosey  and  as  elbowy,  and  as  uppish  and  as  dull,  and  as 


UEGOISME  A  DEUX  153 

bucolic  and  as  aristocratic  and  as  utterly  impossible  as 
ever?  And  how  is  our  dear  authoress?  I  haven't  read 
her  latest  work  as  yet,  but  I  bought  one  at  the  stores  and 
presented  it  to  my  latest  royalty,  his  Serene  Highness  the 
Hereditary  Grand  Duke  of  Hochanseltzer.  I  gave  it  to 
him  for  its  moral  teaching.  He  is  a  wonderfully  sus- 
ceptible young  man.  He  is  tickled  to  death  by  the  moral 
tone.  He  has  quite  given  up  his  old  habit  of  making 
sans  at  out  on  the  jack  of  diamonds  and  the  queen  of 
hearts.  He  says  it  is  superb;  it  is  magnifique  ze  expres- 
sion of  a  spirit.  I  told  him  we  had  little  in  the  way  of 
moral  tone  to  boast  about  in  our  family,  but  what  we  had 
we  liked  the  world  to  wot  of.  But  I  chatter,  darling,  and 
I  must  really  go  and  dress.  I  fear  you  will  have  to  dine 
alone.  Reginald,  of  course,  is  much  too  busy  propping 
up  the  empire  to  come  away  as  far  as  Mount  Street.  You 
see  if  once  he  removed  his  shoulder  from  beneath  the 
British  Constitution  down  would  fall  the  whole  massive 
structure  and  plunge  millions  into  death  and  ruin,  vide 
his  speech  in  the  House  on  Tuesday.  It  is  rather  a  re- 
sponsibility for  the  poor  dear,  isn't  it?  I  do  hope  his 
health  will  not  give  way  beneath  the  strain.  Fancy  hav- 
ing to  support  it  alone  and  unaided  on  his  own  dear  shoul- 
ders, day  after  day,  year  after  year.  It  is  like  the  solar 
system;  the  imagination  reels.  Samson,  Hercules,  and 
Reginald  will  be  the  three  strong  men  of  history,  with 
long  odds  on  Reginald.  The  dear  devoted  fellow,  to  think 
that  this  pillar  of  the  Government  has  not  left  the  post  of 
duty  for  thirteen  years,  even  to  come  and  see  his  wife! 
But  au  revoir,  my  sister.  I  must  go  really.  I  mustn't 
keep  the  homy-handed  one  waiting.  He  is  too  expensive. 
I  pay  him  so  much  an  hour  to  take  me  about,  like  my 
cook  pays  her  guardsman." 

The  volatile  lady,  who  had  chattered  ceaselessly  from 
the  time  she  entered  the  room  to  the  time  she  left  it,  de- 
parted finally  after  a  stay  of  half  an  hour,  to  the  great 
relief  of  Mrs.  Broke. 

"  Cocaine,"  murmured  Mrs.  Broke  as  the  door  closed 


154  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

upon  her  sister.  "If  poor  Mary  is  not  soon  immured  in  a 
private  asylum  I  fear  she  will  lower  the  standard  of  the 
national  sanity.  Poor  dear  Charles  is  bad  enough;  but 
cocaine  is  rnuch  more  deadly  than  whisky." 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE  NOBLEMAN   OUT  OF   THE   NOVELETTE 

NO.  17  Cromwell  Villas,  Hampden  Road,  London,  N., 
was  the  kind  of  place  that  enables  the  passer-by  to 
realize  the  meaning  of  the  reverse  of  life's  medal.  There 
was  nothing  to  recommend  it  from  without.  There  was 
nothing  to  suggest  why  any  human  creature  should  inhabit 
it,  except  by  force  of  need.  It  was  situated  in  the  heart 
of  a  neighbourhood  that  had  not  even  the  spirit  to  make  a 
pretence  of  being  what  it  was  not.  There  was  nothing  in 
or  about  it  to  relieve  its  repulsiveness.  Nothing  could 
gloss  over  the  hopelessness  in  which  it  was  immersed ;  soap 
and  water  and  the  County  Council  had  given  up  the  at- 
tempt. It  is  a  sardonic  fancy  in  the  architect  of  such 
dwellings  to  enclose  a  piece  of  earth  a  few  square  feet  in 
diameter  in  front  of  each.  What  purpose  such  an  en- 
closure serves  is  hard  to  tell,  unless  it  is  to  enable  each 
house  to  stand  in  its  own  grounds.  Or  it  may  be  a  con- 
cession to  the  inveterate  land-hunger  of  the  Briton.  The 
tenant  may  feel  that  the  grimy  patch  is  his  own  piece  of 
arable,  a  square  yard  of  territory  off  which  he  can  per- 
emptorily warn  anybody  who  may  presume  to  trespass. 

Again,  the  architect  may  be  one  of  a  sombre  imagina- 
tion, a  symbolist  who  would  strike  an  analogy  between 
these  patches  of  sterility  and  the  neighbourhood  in  which 
they  are  laid.  Never  are  they  green  or  fruitful.  Choked 
with  grime  and  refuse,  they  remain  foul  and  perennially 
bare.  Nothing  that  is  fair  can  hope  there  to  raise  its 
head.  The  dog  leaves  its  bone  there;  the  miserable  serv- 
ant girl,  the  '*  slavey  '*  of  the  true  genus,  bestrews  it  with 
ashes  and  fish  bones,  and  the  stalks  of  decomposing  cab- 
bages. 

155 


156  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

The  sun,  an  agent  of  compassion  in  other  districts,  re- 
fuses to  extend  its  beneficence  to  Hampden  Road,  Lon- 
don, N.  The  less  light  by  which  there  is  to  view  its 
details,  the  less  unhappy  does  it  appear.  There  is  poverty, 
squalor,  and  meanness  on  every  side.  If  by  a  remote 
chance  the  eye  is  arrested  by  an  attempt  to  achieve  some- 
thing a  little  worthier  in  the  shape  of  a  whitened  doorstep, 
an  unbroken  knocker,  curtains  reasonably  clean  or  without 
an  immoderate  number  of  holes,  it  is  at  once  revolted  by 
the  brutal  relief  in  which  it  throws  neighbouring  objects. 
In  such  places  the  spirit  of  environment  is  ruthless,  all- 
iconquering. 

No.  17  Cromwell  Villas  was  in  the  middle  of  a  row  of 
twenty  similar  houses.  Conceivably  it  might  have  bewil- 
dered the  passer-by  with  its  claims  to  distinction.  There 
was  a  quite  remarkable  striving  after  something  better. 
Its  doorstep,  its  front  parlour  window,  and  its  curtains 
came  as  near  to  cleanliness  as  the  exigencies  of  a  street 
permitted  in  which  the  sun  itself  was  a  ball  of  grime. 
There  was  also  a  bunch  of  flowers  set  in  the  window  in  a 
china  cup.  Beside  it  was  the  inevitable  card,  but  instead 
of  bearing  the  legend  "  Apartments  "  it  said,  "  Miss  Spar- 
row, Dressmaker.'* 

Two  women  were  seated  behind  this  card  on  a  bitterly 
cold  morning  in  the  middle  of  April.  One  was  old,  with 
hair  almost  white  and  very  meagre.  By  careful  arrange- 
ment it  was  made  the  most  of.  She  herself  was  very 
meagre  and  somehow  conveyed  a  suggestion  also  of  being 
made  the  most  of.  She  was  very  thin;  her  black  dress 
was  primitive  and  threadbare,  but  was  not  without  neat- 
ness. The  face  was  yellow  and  shrivelled  like  a  piece  of 
parchment.  It  was  a  wholly  commonplace  face,  trans- 
figured with  a  certain  harshness,  the  outward  and  visible 
sign  of  a  lifelong  struggle  with  its  destiny. 

If  the  face  had  ever  been  able  to  look  up  in  the  battle 
of  life  it  might  have  been  more  agreeable  to  gaze  upon. 
If  a  ray  of  honest  sunshine,  a  breath  of  pure  air  could 
have  touched  it  now  and  again ;  if  the  hourly  struggle  for 


THE  NOBLEMAN  OUT  OF  THE  NOVELETTE  157 

a  loaf  of  bread,  and  two  ounces  of  tea,  a  roof  and  a  bag 
of  coals,  could  have  been  put  by  for  a  single  week ;  if  the 
owner  of  the  face  could  have  felt  that  life  itself  did  not 
wholly  depend  on  those  half -blind  eyes,  on  those  coarsened 
weary  fingers,  on  those  fragile  limbs,  on  the  eternal  plying 
of  needles  and  scissors  from  the  first  ray  of  light  in  the 
morning  to  the  last  gutter  of  the  candle  at  night,  her  por- 
trait might  have  seemed  a  little  less  out  of  place  in  a  gal- 
lery of  the  fair,  the  wise,  the  agreeable,  the  well-bred. 

The  other  woman  was;  much  younger :  a  girl.  Like  the 
flowers  in  the  cracked  cup  in  the  window  she  had  an  air  of 
being  a  phenomenon  in  Hampden  Road.  She  also  was 
very  slight;  and  she  was  clad  in  black;  but  the  dress  was 
less  primitive  in  style  and  texture  than  that  of  the  elder 
woman,  for  in  every  line  of  it  was  the  ineffable  neatness 
of  the  London  shop-girl. 

She  may  have  been  beautiful  or  she  may  not,  but  her 
face  was  of  a  very  delicate,  poignant,  arresting  kind.  And 
in  any  case  she  was  sufficiently  picturesque.  It  was  the 
glamour  of  youth  that  depends  on  vivid  colouring,  the 
sheen  of  the  hair,  the  ripe  look  of  the  lips,  the  freshness 
of  the  skin,  the  clear  candour  of  the  eyes  that  may  even 
come  to  flower  in  Cromwell  Villas,  but  doesn't  stay  there 
long.  She  could  have  sat  for  the  picture  of  Youth ;  and 
all  who  were  not  insensible  to  perfect  simplicity  and  per- 
fect innocence  must  have  been  a  little  thrilled  by  her.  A 
year  hence  might  prove  another  matter,  but  as  yet  she  was 
absolutely  fair. 

The  two  women  were  talking  excitedly,  but  at  the  same 
time  both  unceasingly  plied  needle,  scissors  and  thread. 
For  some  little  time  past  they  had  been  living  in  the  realm 
of  faery.  A  touch  of  true  but  very  strange  romance  had 
entered  the  lives  of  aunt  and  niece.  They  were  trying 
now  to  realize  exactly  what  had  happened.  At  present, 
however,  excited,  incredulous,  astonished  as  they  were, 
they  were  too  bewildered  to  be  able  to  do  so.  No  matter 
how  hard  they  rubbed  their  eyes  they  could  not  convince 
themselves  that  they  were  really  awake.    They  had  three 


158  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

tangible  evidences  to  go  upon,  however.  Alice  had  a  wed- 
ding-ring on  her  finger,  two  five-pound  notes  in  her  purse, 
and  she  had  given  up  her  situation. 

Aunt  and  niece  were  in  a  state  of  deliciously  vague  ex- 
citement, like  that  of  a  child  when  it  hears  a  knock  upon 
the  nursery  door  and  is  informed  that  it  is  a  bear.  They 
were  rather  too  frightened  to  be  wholly  happy,  yet  they 
were  much  too  happy  to  be  really  frightened.  The  thing 
itself  was  most  exquisite  matter  of  fact,  yet  it  out-Family- 
Heralded  the  Family  Herald.  To  them  of  all  people,  to 
them  in  their  mundane  sphere,  to  them  in  the  unvarying 
monotony  of  their  daily  lives  when  the  only  adventures 
they  had  in  the  course  of  a  year  were  the  weekly  ones  with 
the  landlord.  King  Romance  had  stepped  directly  out  of 
his  novelette,  and  had  come  ruffling  it  with  a  carol  on  his 
lips  and  a  most  beautiful  insolent  swagger,  to  No.  17 
Cromwell  Villas,  Hampden  Road. 

Why  he  had  chosen  that  exact  number  was  altogether 
beyond  them.  Why  had  he  not  gone  to  No.  15  or  No.  19, 
both  very  nice  and  worthy  people — whatever  had  put  it 
into  his  head  to  come  there?  If  he  had  not  been  the  real 
King  Romance  of  which  they  had  read,  if  he  had  been 
some  plausible  impostor  masquerading  in  the  royal  purple 
for  an  ulterior  purpose,  they  could  have  understood  it. 
Their  incredulity  would  not  have  been  so  paralysing.  Im- 
postors are  said  to  be  common;  but  there  is  only  one  au- 
thentic sovereign.  And  why  that  dazzling  young  monarch 
should  have  chosen  17  for  the  magic  number,  no  more  and 
no  less,  must  remain  a  mystery  and  one  of  the  most  won- 
derful things  ever  known. 

"  You  see,  my  dear,"  said  the  aunt,  picking  the  stitches 
out  of  a  bodice  while  her  dim  eyes  bent  lower  and  lower 
to  her  work ;  "  you  see,  my  dear,  it  would  not  have  upset 
me  so  if  he  was  not  a  real  gentleman.  Do  what  you  will 
you  can't  help  noticing  that." 

"  No,  auntie,  you  can't,"  said  her  niece,  with  a  beating 
heart. 

She  was  heating  an  iron  at  the  fire. 

'*  It  is  just  that  which  has  put  me  about  so,"  said  the 


THE  NOBLEMAN  OUT  OF  THE  NOVELETTE  159 

aunt.  '*  When  he  knocked  at  the  door  and  I  went  to  open 
it,  just  as  I  am  now,  with  all  these  bits  of  cotton  on  my 
dress,  and  there  he  was  standing  on  the  doorstep  that  I 
hadn't  had  time  to  clean,  and  he  says,  *  Miss  Sparrow,'  you 
could  have  knocked  me  down  with  a  feather.  Of  course, 
my  dear,  you  have  said  all  along  how  fine  he  was ;  and  you 
will  remember  that  I  said  that  if  that  was  so  you  must  be 
all  the  more  careful,  because  the  finer  the  gentleman,  the 
less  a  young  girl  ought  to  put  her  trust  in  him.  The  likes 
of  them  don't  condescend  to  the  likes  of  us  except  for  a 
reason.  Those  were  my  very  words.  And  they  are  my 
words  still." 

"  But  I  am  married,  auntie,  now,"  said  the  girl. 

"  You  are,  my  dear,  and  that  is  just  what  makes  every- 
thing so  unreal.  If  he  were  not  just  what  he  is,  it  would 
be  more  natural.  Even  when  you  came  home  and  spoke 
about  him  first  I  never  thought  he  was  one  of  that  sort. 
Why,  he  might  have  been  a  young  earl  the  way  he  stood 
there  with  his  hat  oflf  and  talked  so  grand  and  simple  and 
so  mannerly.  I  never  saw  anyone  look  the  part  so  much 
as  he  does;  and  besides,  if  you  never  saw  him  at  all  you 
would  know  what  he  was  by  his  beautiful  voice.  He  can't 
help  being  a  gentleman.  It  is  born  in  him  just  as  it  is 
born  in  that  cat  to  walk  stately.  It  is  not  a  diamond  pin 
and  a  gold  watch-chain  with  him.  You  can't  even  bring 
your  mind  to  such  things  when  he  is  talking  to  you.  You 
don't  know  whether  he  wears  them  or  not,  and,  my  dear, 
you  don't  care.  I  could  not  tell  you  how  he  was  dressed, 
although  I  am  sure  his  shirt  and  his  collar  must  have  been 
ironed  at  one  of  those  patent  steam  laundries.  You  could 
not  possibly  do  them  at  home  as  well  as  that." 

"  No,  auntie,  dear,  I  don't  suppose  you  could,"  said  her 
niece,  smiling  gravely. 

"  Do  you  know,  my  dear,"  continued  the  older  woman  a 
little  ecstatically,  "  he  made  me  think  of  the  Duke  of 
Grandchester  that  the  Lady  Gwendolen  married  in  that 
beautiful  story  in  the  Family  Herald  last  week.  Do  you 
remember  that  it  said,  *  The  Duke  had  the  grand  manner 
peculiar  to  dukes '  ?    Well,  my  dear,  Mr.  Broke  put  me 


i6o  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

in  mind  of  him.  I  am  sure  the  author  must  have  copied 
him  when  he  wrote  that.  I  have  never  known  before  quite 
what  the  *  grand  manner '  meant ;  but  I  think  I  do  now. 
And  that  is  why  I  am  so  afraid.  I  never  slept  at  all  last 
night  for  thinking  of  you.  It  all  seems  so  much  like  a 
story;  but  I  have  read  somewhere  that  truth  is  stranger 
than  fiction.  And  so  it  is,  my  dear,  so  it  is,  if  all  that  has 
happened  to  you  is  actually  true ! " 

*'  Yes,  yes,  auntie,  it  is  all  true,"  said  her  niece  eagerly. 
"  It  is  all  perfectly  real,  although  it  is  so  much  like  a  fairy 
tale.  Perhaps  I  am  Cinderella  and  I  may  have  a  fairy 
godmother.  In  any  case  here  is  the  wedding-ring  on  my 
finger." 

The  girl  laughed  nervously  but  joyfully.  She  too  was 
afraid ;  but  her  fear  was  of  a  kind  that  lent  a  keener  edge 
to  her  wild  happiness.  Come  what  might,  no  one  could 
gainsay  that  they  were  man  and  wife.  An  inviolable  tie 
bound  them  together.  Nothing  could  rob  her  of  the  emo- 
tion of  strange  joy  that  fact  had  given  her. 

"  He  says  he  will  introduce  you  to  what  he  calls  *  his 
people '  as  soon  as  he  can,"  said  the  aunt.  "  And  I  am  not 
sure,  dearie,  that  I  shall  not  be  a  little  easier  in  my  mind 
when  he  has  done  that.  He  did  not  say  much  about  them, 
but  I  could  tell  that  they  were  very  grand  folks.  But,  of 
course,  they  must  be,  or  he  would  not  belong  to  them. 
How  I  should  like  to  see  his  mother !  What  a  grand  lady 
she  must  be.  I  am  sure  his  people,  whoever  they  are,  must 
be  just  like  him.  They  must  all  be  ladies  and  gentlemen, 
and  very  handsome  and  mannerly.  He  must  have  a  won- 
derful mother;  a  real  countess,  or  a  duchess,  or  perhaps 
even  a  marchioness.  For  there  is  nothing  imitation  about 
him,  is  there?  You  can  see  what  in  others  you  might 
take  to  be  airs  come  quite  natural  to  him.  And  so  simple 
as  he  is  with  it  all.  He  must  know  all  those  grand  people 
in  the  West  End,  but  do  you  know,  my  dear,  I  never  heard 
him  mention  them  once.  I  wish  that  Mrs.  West  at  No.  23 
could  see  him ;  she  never  opens  her  mouth  but  out  comes 
her  uncle  the  vestry  man.  He  does  not  make  the  least 
parade.    When  you  get  over  the  first  shock  of  finding 


THE  NOBLEMAN  OUT  OF  THE  NOVELETTE  i6i 

that  you  are  talking  to  him,  it  is  just  as  easy  as  it  is  to 
speak  to  the  milkman.  Why,  he  sat  down  at  this  very 
table  and  took  a  cup  of  tea.  And  would  you  believe,  my 
dear,  he  put  in  his  sugar  with  his  fingers.  I  do  wish  that 
Mrs.  West  could  have  seen  him." 

Billy's  wife  laughed  joyfully  again.  The  simple  old 
woman  had  been  singing  his  praises  in  this  childlike  man- 
ner for  two  days.  There  was  no  keeping  her  from  the 
delicious  topic,  nor  did  she  try,  for  it  was  poetry  to  them 
both.  To  every  word  uttered  by  her  aunt  she  could  sub- 
scribe. She  was  too  much  at  the  mercy,  however,  of  the 
wild  riot  of  happiness  that  sent  the  blood  racing  and 
tingling  to  her  temples,  and  singing  in  her  excited  brain, 
to  be  able  to  clothe  her  own  emotion  with  words.  Also, 
she  had  a  feeling  of  reticence.  It  hardly  became  one  who 
was  officially  his  wife  to  lay  bare  her  thoughts  in  these 
unguarded  terms.  All  the  same,  no  praise  of  her  husband 
was  too  extravagant  for  her  ears;  no  eulogium  <:ould  be 
passed  upon  him  that  he  did  not  merit.  He  was  the  true 
chevalier  without  fear  and  without  stain.  She  had  seen 
a  good  deal  more  of  things  than  her  aunt,  that  imaginative 
old  creature  who  had  passed  a  lifetime  of  toil  in  a  world 
peopled  with  the  figures  of  her  fancy,  yet  subject  to  the 
arbitrary  conventions  of  her  own  trite  point  of  view. 
Even  a  young  girl  cannot  spend  a  year  in  a  shop  in  Bond 
Street  without  being  brought  to  view  the  life  by  which 
she  is  oppressed  with  wiser  eyes. 

This  old  woman  had  reared  her  orphan  niece  in  the 
teeth  of  circumstance.  She  had  watched  her  grow  into  a 
flower  in  whose  strange  beauty  she  had  learned  to  take  an 
inordinate  pride.  And  of  late  when  at  the  end  of  her 
day's  labour  she  had  turned  to  her  story  papers  for  an 
hour  that,  before  she  went  to  bed,  she  might  enter  the 
realm  of  faery,  she  had  been  led  to  meditate  a  little  wildly, 
a  little  wistfully  upon  the  beauty  of  the  girl.  If  only 
some  rich  gentleman  in  real  life  could  be  brought  to  see 
her,  might  he  not  fall  in  love  with  her!  In  her  weekly 
story  paper  the  thing  was  occurring  constantly.  Oh,  if 
it  could  occur  to  Alice !     Surely  no  heroine  in  a  novel  was 


i62  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

fairer  than  she.  The  old  woman  believed  there  was  not 
her  equal  in  loveliness  in  all  the  world.  Besides,  it  was 
coming  to  seem  so  necessary  that  she  should  be  rescued 
from  the  daily  round  of  her  toil.  It  had  become  very 
clear  to  Miss  Sparrow  that  the  life  of  a  girl  in  a  London 
shop  was  too  severe  for  her  fragile  niece.  The  long  hours, 
the  close  confinement,  the  physical  strain  of  having  to 
stand  so  long  behind  a  counter  were  beginning  to  tell  upon 
her.  You  had  only  to  glance  at  her  to  feel  that  nature 
had  not  planned  her  for  hardship.  Her  parents  before 
her  had  been  fragile  too.  Neither  of  them  from  the  first 
had  been  destined  for  long  days,  but  it  was  certain  that 
toil  and  poverty  had  curtailed  their  lives. 

Therefore  when  the  prince  out  of  the  fairy-book,  the 
nobleman  out  of  the  novelette,  came  and  slipped  a  wed- 
ding-ring on  the  finger  of  her  niece,  the  imaginative  old 
woman,  fearful  as  she  might  be  of  what  the  future  might 
hold  was  yet  filled  with  exaltation.  For  an  instant  she 
paused  in  her  work,  and  raised  her  half-blind  eyes  to  peer 
into  the  exquisite  face. 

"  I  will  say  this,  my  lamb " — there  was  an  echo  of 
triumph  in  the  thin  voice — "  Mr.  Broke  may  be  the  perfect 
gentleman,  as  of  course  he  is,  but  he  is  not  an  inch  better 
than  you  deserve.  And  you  will  not  disgrace  him.  He 
may  have  fine  friends,  but  you  will  be  able  to  take  your 
place  in  their  midst.  I  have  brought  you  up  carefully; 
you  have  attended  a  place  of  worship  at  least  once  every 
Sabbath  day;  you  have  always  been  a  good  and  obedient 
girl  in  everything ;  and  although  I  am  your  auntie  and  say 
it  who  ought  not,  when  I  compare  your  looks  with  those 
of  the  fine  ladies  whose  pictures  are  in  the  illustrated 
paper  Mr.  Berry  the  grocer  wraps  the  tea  in,  I  think 
nobody  will  deny  that  you  are  more  beautiful,  a  hundred 
times  more  beautiful  than  they  are." 

"  Hush,  auntie  dear,"  said  the  girl,  with  a  soft  laugh. 
"  You  really  mustn't  say  that !  " 

"  I  don't  care,"  said  the  old  woman  vaingloriously.  "  It 
is  the  truth.  I  will  say  again  that  Mr.  Broke  is  a  very 
lucky  young  gentleman.     I  know  I  am  your  aunt;  but  if 


THE  NOBLEMAN  OUT  OF  THE  NOVELETTE  163 

you  were  not  my  niece  at  all,  and  I  had  had  nothing  to  do 
with  your  upbringing,  I  should  say  the  same.  If  you  were 
the  niece  of  that  Mrs.  West  I  should  not  alter  my  opinion." 

It  was  at  this  moment  that  the  quiet  street  was  invaded 
by  alien  sounds.  There  was  a  rattle  of  horses'  feet,  but 
strangely  it  was  unaccompanied  by  a  noise  of  wheels. 
The  narrow  thoroughfare,  which  ended  in  a  cul-de-sac, 
was  free  of  traffic  as  a  rule;  and  there  was  something 
rather  peculiar  about  this  vehicle,  if  vehicle  it  was,  that 
put  it  out  of  the  category  of  the  tradesman's  cart.  Curi- 
osity urged  the  girl  to  look  out  of  the  window. 

*'  Oh,  look,  auntie !  '*  she  cried.     "  A  carriage  and  pair." 

No  doubt  it  was  an  apparition  that  marked  an  epoch  in 
the  history  of  Hampden  Road.  Miss  Sparrow  could  not 
recall  an  instance  of  such  an  equipage  being  seen  in  it  be- 
fore. Had  the  Queen  been  in  the  act  of  passing  her  win- 
dow, the  old  woman  could  not  have  risen  from  her  work 
more  promptly  or  more  swiftly  have  adjusted  her  spec- 
tacles, 

"  How  splendid ! "  she  said.  "  And  the  wheels  don't 
make  a  bit  of  noise ;  and  how  nice  those  bells  sound,  don't 
they?  And  what  stately  men  those  two  are  sitting  in  the 
front,  although  they  do  look  funny  in  their  fur  capes  and 
with  those  shaving  brushes  in  their  hats.  They  are  serv- 
ants, I  suppose,  but  I  am  sure  they  must  be  very  high 
class.  I  wonder  where  they  are  going.  Why,  my  dear, 
I  believe  they  are  going  to  stop  at  Mrs.  West's." 

Alice  could  not  help  smiling  at  her  aunt's  enthusiasm. 
She  was  quite  familiar  with  these  vehicles;  although  be- 
fore she  went  to  the  shop  in  Bond  Street  they  would  have 
cast  a  similar  spell  upon  her. 

"  Why,  it  is  stopping,"  cried  the  old  woman  excitedly. 
"  Oh,  Alice,  it  is  going  to  stop  at  Mrs.  West's !  " 

Suddenly  the  girl  at  her  elbow  began  to  tremble  vio- 
lently. She  was  pierced  by  an  idea  which  was  making  her 
gasp. 

"  It — it  is — going  to  stop  here !  " 

The  older  woman  began  to  tremble  also. 

"  Never  I  "  she  gasped. 


i64  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

But  outside  in  the  street  the  dread  fact  confronted 
them.  After  a  little  irresolution  on  the  part  of  the  coach- 
man, in  the  course  of  which  the  footman  scanned  the 
dingy  numbers  of  the  doors  on  both  sides  of  the  street, 
the  fine  carriage  drew  up  exactly  in  front  of  the  magic 
number  17.  That  unassuming  number  had,  indeed,  come 
of  late  to  have  a  strange  significance  in  the  world  of  faery 

"  Oh,  my  dear,"  said  the  aunt  in  a  flash  of  terrified  in- 
spiration, "  it  is  one  of  Mr.  Broke's  grand  friends  come 
to  call  upon  you.     Whatever  shall  we  do !  " 

The  mind  of  the  young  wife  had  travelled  to  that  con- 
clusion a  full  half  minute  ago.  The  old  woman  and  the 
young  grew  pale  with  anxiety.  That  wretched  little  room 
was  no  place  in  which  to  receive  grand  people.  Too 
acutely  were  they  conscious  of  the  mean  figures  it  and 
they  must  scut  in  the  eyes  of  the  occupants  of  a  carriage 
and  pair.  But  the  thought  uppermost  in  their  minds,  the 
most  paralysing  thought  of  all,  was  the  fear  they  had  of 
disgracing  Mr.  Broke.  It  did  not  matter  much,  really, 
what  grand  people  thought  about  people  like  themselves; 
but  now  that  Alice  was  actually  the  wife  of  Mr.  Broke  it 
might  do  him  an  injury  with  his  friends  if  she  were  to  be 
discovered  in  such  circumstances. 

"  Oh,  auntie ! "  said  Alice,  "  will  you  go  to  the  door, 
and — and  please  say  I  am  not  at  home." 

"  No,  child,"  said  the  old  woman,  with  a  certain  prim- 
ness striking  through  her  agitation,  '*  I  cannot  say  that. 
It  would  not  be  true." 

"  Oh,  but  auntie  you  must,  please.  It  is  for  the  sake 
of — of  my  husband!  His  friends  must  not  come  into  a 
room  like  this." 

"  No,  no,  child,  I  must  not  tell  an  untruth." 

"  Oh,  but  auntie,  it  is — it  is  not  really  an  untruth  at  all. 
It  only  means  that — that  I  cannot  see  them." 

During  this  dialogue  between  the  two  distressed  crea- 
tures a  very  resolute-looking  lady,  with  a  very  fine  hat  and 
a  wonderful  fur  coat,  had  been  seen  to  descend  from  the 
carriage  with  a  little  aid  from  the  long-coated  footman 
and  a  good  deal  from  her  own  dignity.    The  two  women 


THE  NOBLEMAN  OUT  OF  THE  NOVELETTE  165 

with  a  thrill  in  their  hearts  had  heard  her  ascend  the  steps 
and  thump  commandingly  upon  the  decrepit  knocker. 

"  Please,  auntie,  you  must." 

"  No,  child." 

A  second  commanding  thump  upon  the  knocker. 

"  Oh,  what  can  I  do?  She  must  not  see  me.  But  per- 
haps it  is  his  mother.  Perhaps  she  will  not  mind.  I  will 
go,  auntie,"  said  Alice  resolutely. 

"  No,  no,  child,"  said  her  aunt.  "  It  is  more  proper 
that  I  should  answer  the  door.  Stay  here,  my  dear,  and 
brush  the  bits  of  cloth  off  your  dress,  and  take  the  needle 
out  of  your  sleeve,  and  find  the  Family  Herald,  and  try 
to  look  as  if  you  have  been  reading." 

In  the  middle  of  these  feverishly  given  injunctions  the 
door  received  a  third  thump  from  the  knocker,  more  com- 
manding than  any.  Miss  Sparrow  ran  in  great  trepidation 
to  reply  to  it. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

AN   EXCURSION    INTO   SENTIMENT 

IN  less  than  a  minute  the  small  and  mean  room  had  been 
invaded  by  a  presence.  The  lady  who  had  come  in  the 
carriage  and  pair  was  in  the  eyes  of  Miss  Sparrow  fitted  in 
every  way  to  be  a  friend  of  Mr.  Broke's.  Indeed,  the 
manner  of  this  wonderful  person  was  as  remarkable  as 
was  his.  If  she  had  come  on  foot  and  without  a  fur  coat 
you  would  have  known  at  once  that  she  was  a  lady  born 
and  bred.  And  she  too  had  the  particular  magic  that  be- 
longed to  Mr.  Broke,  for  no  sooner  did  she  begin  to  talk 
to  you  than  the  overwhelming  sense  of  her  grandeur  left 
you.  By  some  occult  means  the  fear  of  her  went  from 
you;  and  you  found  yourself  to  be  conversing  with  her 
with  far  less  trepidation  than  seemed  possible  before  you 
had  actually  spoken  to  her. 

"  You  have  a  niece,"  the  lady  had  said,  before  Miss 
Sparrow  had  been  able  to  make  an  attempt  to  say  any- 
thing.    "  May  I  see  her  ?  " 

"  Yes,  ma'am,'*  Miss  Sparrow  had  murmured  in  reply 
in  a  perfectly  inaudible  tone,  and  making  a  deep  curtsey 
that  seemed  to  have  survived  from  the  days  when  George 
the  Third  was  king. 

When  the  great  lady  came  into  the  tiny  room,  five  yards 
by  six,  she  said :  "  Your  room  is  delightfully  cosy.  May 
I  take  off  my  coat  ?  " 

To  herself  she  said :  "  One  wonders  why  the  lower 
orders  have  such  a  deep-rooted  horror  of  ventilation. 
One  wonders  how  they  can  exist  at  all  in  such  an  atmo- 
sphere." 

Miss  Sparrow  begged  to  be  allowed  to  help  the  lady  to 

i66 


AN  EXCURSION  INTO  SENTIMENT        167 

take  off  her  coat ;  and  while  she  was  engaged  in  so  doing, 
her  fingers,  which  had  passed  a  lifetime  in  the  handling  of 
inferior  materials,  were  thrilled  by  the  feel  of  the  soft  fur 
and  the  finest  cloth  that  money  could  buy.  A  dressmaker 
as  well  as  a  poet  may  have  the  sensibility  of  the  artist. 

The  old  woman  then  made  haste  to  provide  the  great 
lady  with  the  best  chair  the  room  could  boast :  a  chair  with 
a  singularly  unyielding  surface  covered  with  horsehair. 
Seated  upon  this  Billy's  mother  was  able  at  her  leisure, 
but  not  without  some  little  personal  inconvenience,  to  sur- 
vey the  person  whom  Billy  had  married.  She  regarded 
her  with  a  perfectly  frank  scrutiny,  a  little  softened  by  her 
smile. 

"  I  think  you  know  my  son,"  she  said.  "  My  name  is 
Broke." 

Alice  lifted  her  eyes  rather  timorously  to  Billy's  mother 
and  at  the  same  moment  blushed  vividly. 

"  I  understood  my  son  to  say  that  you  were  married  to 
him  on  Tuesday  last." 

"  Yes,"  said  Alice  in  a  faint  voice. 

Mrs.  Broke  paused  to  resume  her  scrutiny.  Her  first 
sensation  had  been  one  of  displeasure.  The  creature  was 
not  clad  in  the  lurid  colours  in  which  her  fancy  had  chosen 
to  paint  her.  One  could  hardly  call  her  vulgar.  And  she 
could  hardly  be  designing  with  a  countenance  of  such 
babelike  candour,  of  such  pathetic  innocence.  The  phan- 
tasm of  the  adventuress  with  the  previous  husband  had 
already  faded  as  completely  as  if  it  had  never  been.  In- 
deed, as  she  continued  to  look  upon  the  creature,  she  could 
almost  see  a  reason  for  Billy's  remarkable  solicitude.  She 
had  decided  in  her  own  mind  that  his  attitude  was  farcical, 
which  the  bald  fact  was  bound  to  expose.  But  now  that 
she  had  set  eyes  upon  the  object  which  had  called  it  forth, 
she  began,  much  against  her  will,  to  understand  it. 

The  creature  was  indeed  a  delicate,  fragile  thing.  To 
wound  her  would  be  like  pulling  a  wing  off  a  butterfly. 
The  redoubtable  lady  sighed  a  little ;  the  faint  odour  of 
romance  those  matter-of-fact  nostrils  had  scented  already 
was  decidedly  annoying.     She  had  come  into  squalor  to 


i6§  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

look  for  vulgarity, '  and  she  half  feared  she  had  found 
something  else.  Looking  in  that  shrinking  face  it  was  im- 
possible by  any  association  of  ideas  to  attribute  design  or 
motive.  This  strange  old  person,  the  aunt,  was  in  her  own 
way  also  evidently  without  blemish.  Billy's  mother  could 
read  in  the  faded  eyes  an  extraordinary  solicitude  for  her 
niece.  In  a  grotesque  and  impalpable  way  it  reminded  her 
of  the  look  there  was  in  Billy's  when  he  made  her  promise 
not  to  hurt  her.  There  was  a  similar  quixotic  tenderness 
in  the  face  of  this  old  woman. 

Insensibly  Mrs.  Broke  modified  her  tone  when  she  spoke 
next;  and  the  question  she  asked  was  certainly  not  the 
one  she  had  come  there  to  put.  Had  she  been  listening 
to  the  sound  of  her  own  voice,  its  inflection  might  have 
increased  the  sense  of  annoyance  under  which  she  was 
labouring  already. 

"  I  suppose  you  are  in  love  with  my  son  ?  " 

The  girl  looked  at  her  without  speaking ;  a  soft  light  as 
of  tears  trembled  upon  her  eyelashes. 

"  I  suppose  if  you  learnt  that  you  had  done  him  an  in- 
jury— unwittingly,  of  course — you  would  be  very  much 
distressed." 

"  I  could  not  do  him  an  injury,  ma'am." 

"  I  said  unwittingly." 

"  I  do  not  think  it  would  be  possible  for  me  to  do  him 
an  injury.  I  could  not  have  a  thought  that  would  do  him< 
harm.     I  do  not  see  how  I  could  do  him  an  injury." 

For  once  Mrs.  Broke  was  at  a  loss  to  know  how  to  press 
her  point  strictly  in  accordance  with  the  rules  of  the  game. 
She  was  under  a  pledge  to  Billy  not  to  hurt  the  creature ; 
although,  to  be  sure,  when  she  made  that  promise  her  own 
interpretation  of  it  was  somewhat  liberal.  But  she  had  to 
:confess  that  now  in  any  case  it  was  hardly  in  her  power 
wantonly  to  cause  her  pain.  She  was  almost  like  a  piece 
of  gossamer,  the  stuff  of  which  dreams  are  fashioned.  A 
rude  breath  upon  that  fragility  and  it  might  evanish  in 
this  air. 

Indeed,  this  strong-killed  woman  of  the  world  was 
afraid  that  she  was  about  to  make  a  sort  of  excursion  into 


AN  EXCURSION  INTO  SENTIMENT        169 

sentiment.  She  too,  hostile  as  she  was  and  must  be,  was 
already  aware  of  the  immunity  conferred  upon  the  crea- 
ture by  her  innocence.  The  wretched  child  had  wrought 
their  ruin  with  no  weapon  more  potent  than  that.  Really 
an  excellent  stroke  of  irony  on  the  part  of  the  Deviser  of 
the  Human  Comedy!  The  galled  woman  saw  all  this  too 
clearly,  but  yet  she  stayed  the  hand  that  was  poised  to 
strike.  It  was  as  though  she  held  a  tiny  bird  in  her  grasp ; 
the  slightest  pressure  of  those  powerful  fingers  and  the 
last  wild  flutterings  in  that  breast  would  be  for  ever  still. 
For  the  first  time  in  her  life  the  admirable  lady,  who  had 
disciplined  her  own  daughters  ruthlessly  and  had  known 
how  to  make  them  suffer  for  the  common  weal,  found 
herself  choosing  her  phrases  with  a  peculiar  discretion,  a 
peculiar  nicety.  She  must  take  care  not  so  much  as  to 
brush  that  flowerlike  sensitiveness.  Touch  a  petal  of  the 
rose  and  it  is  bruised. 

"  I  think,  child,"  she  said,  still  gazing  at  the  wife  of  her 
son,  "  you  look  rather  delicate." 

"  Yes,  ma'am,  she  does,"  interposed  the  aunt  eagerly. 
"  It  was  a  long  way  for  her  to  go  to  Bond  Street  to  the 
shop.  It  was  not  convenient  for  her  to  live  in,  ma'am, 
because  Perkin  and  Warbeck's  were  so  short  of  room. 
Besides,  Alice  liked  the  liberty  of  going  to  and  fro.  Shop 
life  is  very  trying  for  a  delicate  girl.  She  could  not  have 
kept  on  much  longer,  ma'am ;  it  was  wearing  her  out.  But 
she  had  to  go  out  to  work  to  keep  a  roof  over  us,  because 
my  dressmaking  business  cannot  provide  for  two.  But  I 
thank  God,  ma'am,  that  that  is  all  over  now.  Mr.  Broke 
has  been  so  good,  you  don't  know.  Of  course,  she  is  not 
to  go  to  Bond  Street  any  more.  He  is  taking  a  house  for 
her  in  the  country  as  soon  as  he  can  find  one  suitable. 
He  says  she  wants  the  country  air.  And  so  she  does, 
ma'am.  If  her  parents  before  her  could  have  had  it  they 
might  have  been  spared  many  years  longer  than  they 
were." 

"  They  are  both  dead,  I  presume  ?  " 

"  Her  mother  died  the  day  she  was  born,  and  her  father 
died  before  she  was  born." 


I70  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  You  adopted  your  niece,  Miss  Sparrow  ?  " 

"  Yes,  ma'am.  It  has  been  a  struggle,  but  God  has  seen 
fit  to  help  us.  And  I  will  say  this,  ma'am,  from  the  day  I 
buried  her  mother,  Alice  has  never  been  anything  but  a 
joy  to  me.  She  has  never  given  me  a  moment  of  trouble 
or  anxiety.  She  has  been  a  perfectly  good  and  obedient 
girl,  and  now,  ma'am,  she  has  her  reward." 

"  I  gather  that  the  union  of  your  niece  and  my  son 
meets  with  your  approval.  Miss  Sparrow." 

"  Oh,  ma'am,  it  is  just  like  a  dream !  I  can't  tell  you 
how  many  times  since  she  grew  up  I  have  prayed  that 
Alice  might  marry  a  gentleman.  The  only  thing  that 
could  release  her  from  the  shop  was  for  her  to  become  a 
wife.  But  you  see,  ma'am,  an  ordinary  sort  of  husband 
would  hardly  have  done  for  her.  She  is  formed  too  deli- 
cate for  that.  Even  a  fine  clothes  gentleman,  a  merely 
rich  gentleman,  would  not  have  done  for  her;  he  had  to 
be  a  gentleman  by  nature,  ma'am,  a  gentleman  born  and 
bred.  She  is  a  sort  of  flower,  ma'am,  that  has  to  be 
planted  on  the  south  side  of  a  wall  to  get  the  sun  and  yet 
be  screened  from  the  wind.  I  have  been  able  to  do  that 
myself  in  a  way,  not,  of  course,  in  the  way  I  should  like, 
but  I  am  certain  that  things  have  not  been  quite  so  hard 
for  her  as  they  would  have  been  without  me.  But  she  has 
been  very  much  to  me,  ma'am,  too.  Without  her  I  think 
I  should  have  given  in  long  ago.  I  am  seventy-twO;, 
ma'am,  and  I  am  about  done.  But  it  doesn't  matter  now, 
you  know,  ma'am.  I  am  more  than  content.  I  am  very 
grateful.  It  is  very  kind  of  God  to  remember  an  old 
woman  and  make  her  prayers  come  true  just  as  she  is 
giving  in." 

Mrs.  Broke  thought  of  the  familiar  saying  of  Goethe's : 

Was  man  in  der  Jugend  wiinscht,  hat  man  im  Alter  die  Fulle. 

"  You  bring  to  my  mind  the  words  of  a  great  poet,"  she 
said  to  the  old  woman.  "  Of  that  in  youth  one  desires 
earnestly,  in  old  age  one  shall  have  as  much  as  one  will," 

"  It  is  more  than  true,  ma'am,  in  my  case.  When  your 
son,  the  noblest-looking  young  gentleman  I  have  ever  seen, 


AN  EXCURSION  INTO  SENTIMENT       171 

came  and  sat  in  that  very  chair  you  are  sitting  in  now,  and 
he  said,  '  Miss  Sparrow,  do  you  mind  if  I  marry  your 
niece  ? '  I  nearly  broke  down.  He  might  have  come  from 
heaven,  ma'am,  for  if  I  had  the  pick  of  all  the  gentlemen 
in  the  world  for  Alice,  I  think  I  should  have  chosen  him. 
From  the  way  he  spoke  I  :could  tell  how  he  loved  her. 
And  as  for  Alice,  morning,  noon,  and  night  she  has  no 
thoughts  in  her  mind  but  what  are  caused  by  him." 

"  Miss  Sparrow,  I  believe  you  have  had  to  work  very 
hard  at  your  dressmaking?"  The  strain  the  old  woman 
had  entered  upon  was  becoming  a  little  too  much  even  for 
the  stoicism  of  Billy's  mother. 

"  Yes,  ma'am,  I  have."  The  old  woman  hesitated  a 
little.  "  Yes,  ma'am,  I  have  been  a  worker ;  '  an  old 
struggler,'  as  the  old  woman  said  to  the  great  Doctor 
Johnson.  Not,  you  know,  ma'am,  that  it  is  the  actual 
work  that  grinds  you  down.  It  is  the  fear.  It  makes  the 
blood  run  cold  in  your  heart  when  you  realize  what  must 
happen  if 'you  can't  find  the  three-and-sixpence  every  Fri- 
day for  the  landlord.  It  may  sound  boastful,  to  you, 
ma'am,  but  in  all  the  forty-two  years  I  have  lived  in  this 
house,  I  have  never  had  to  ask  for  a  day  longer  in  which 
to  pay  the  rent.  But  that  is  only  one  thing,  although  the 
most  important.  There's  rates  and  taxes,  and  you  can't 
do  without  food  and  coal.  Then  sometimes  you  want 
clothes  too;  and  there  are  all  manner  of  other  expenses. 
You  see,  ma'am,  strive  as  you  may  at  dressmaking,  you 
can  hardly  ever  put  by  more  than  a  few  pence  a  week  for 
a  rainy  day.  And  for  the  last  few  years  my  eyesight  has 
been  failing.  And  then  you  always  have  the  fear  as  you 
grow  old  that  you  may  lose  your  customers.  But  that  is 
one  of  the  thoughts  you  have  to  put  away." 

"  May  I  ask  how  my  son  first  became  acquainted  with 
your  niece  ?  " 

Again  had  Billy's  mother  felt  the  need  for  a  change  of 
theme. 

"  He  first  saw  her  at  Perkin  and  Warbeck*s  shop, 
ma'am.  I  think  he  got  to  know  her  by  coming  in  to  buy 
things.     But  it  was  not  until  he  bought  a  pair  of  lady's 


172  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

gloves  from  her  and  asked  her  to  accept  them,  that  she 
spoke  of  him  to  me.  Of  course,  ma'am,  I  had  always  told 
her  never  to  take  a  present  from  any  gentleman,  not  even 
a  bunch  of  violets.  You  may  have  daughters  of  your  own, 
ma'am,  but  even  if  you  have  you  must  forgive  me  for 
saying  that  I  don't  suppose  you  have  any  idea  how  careful 
poor  girls  working  in  public  for  their  living  have  to  be. 
It  is  almost  a  curse  if  they  are  born  good-looking.  There 
are  two  kinds  of  gentlemen,  ma'am,  just  as  there  are  two 
kinds  of  most  things. 

"  Well,  from  that  time,  ma'am,  he  was  always  paying 
her  little  attentions,  so  that  no  matter  what  warnings  I 
gave  her  she  began  to  think  of  nothing  else  but  Mr.  Broke. 
I  nearly  went  down  on  my  knees  to  her  to  beg  her  to  be 
careful.  She  was  a  very  good  girl,  and  I  could  see  how 
hard  she  tried  to  heed  my  warnings  not  to  think  about 
him.  But,  oh,  ma'am !  no  matter  what  she  did,  Mr.  Broke 
had  her  in  his  power.  If  he  had  not  been  the  right  kind 
of  gentleman  I  hardly  dare  to  think  what  might  have  hap- 
pened. You  may  have  daughters  of  your  own,  ma'am, 
as  I  say ;  and  you  may  have  seen  a  girl  in  love  against  her 
will.  It  is  very  terrible.  We  both  used  to  cry  together 
about  it  in  the  evenings  when  she  got  home,  and  we  used 
to  pray  together ;  but  the  time  soon  came  when  I  saw  that 
he  had  got  her  completely  in  his  power.  She  could  not 
help  herself;  it  was  like  what  you  might  call  fate.  Then 
he  took  to  writing  to  her ;  and  she  used  to  go  almost  wild. 
She  would  hardly  allow  his  letters  to  go  out  of  her  hands ; 
and  she  always  carried  them  in  her  pocket  to  and  from 
the  shop. 

"  And  I  will  confess  it  to  you  now,  ma'am,  that  it  was  a 
torture  to  me  all  the  time.  I  had  never  seen  this  Mr. 
Broke;  and  you  must  forgive  me  for  saying  it,  ma'am,  I 
did  not  believe  in  him.  Gentlemen  who  write  their  letters 
on  that  sort  of  note-paper  don't  mean  any  good  as  a  gen- 
eral rule  to  the  likes  of  us.  But  I  misjudged  him,  ma'am, 
and  if  the  gratitude  of  an  old  and  poor  woman  is  worth 
anything,  and  I  don't  suppose  it  is,  from  my  heart  I  give 
it,  ma'am,  to  your  son,  Mr.  Broke.     I  honour  him,  ma'am ; 


AN  EXCURSION  INTO  SENTIMENT        173 

I  think  of  him  with  reverence,  because  for  a  gentleman 
of  his  position  it  comes  so  easy  to  act  dishonourable.  I 
say  what  I  know,  ma'am,  because  when  I  was  about  the 
age  of  Alice,  or  perhaps  a  little  older,  I  too — I — only  in 
my  case — only !  " 

The  old  woman  stopped  abruptly.  A  faint  tinge  of 
colour  crept  into  her  face  and  she  trembled  violently.  In 
the  same  moment  her  eyes  filled  slowly  with  tears.  A  dis- 
concerting silence  ensued  in  which  the  furrowed  features 
relaxed.  It  was  for  an  instant  only,  however;  her  face 
almost  immediately  resumed  the  expression  which  a  hard 
and  joyless  life  had  given  it. 

"  I — I  am  talking  to  you,  ma'am,  as  I  don't  think  I  have 
ever  talked  to  anyone  before.  You  are,  as  I  say,  Mr. 
Broke's  mother;  and  being  that  I  know  I  can  trust  and 
respect  you.  But  perhaps  nobody  ever  will  know  but 
God  and  my  own  heart  what  the  reason  is  that  I  honour 
and  respect  your  son  so  much." 

Mrs.  Broke  rose  and  took  up  her  coat.  Her  interview 
had  proved  a  more  painful  business  than  she  had  antici- 
pated. Every  topic  chosen  by  this  old  woman  imbued  her 
with  a  feeling  of  discomfort. 

As  Mrs.  Broke  rose  to  go  the  young  girl  came  from  her 
place  behind  the  table  where  she  had  been  standing  as  far 
as  possible  from  her  husband's  mother,  and  made  a  timid 
offer  to  help  her  to  put  on  her  coat.  As  she  did  so  Mrs. 
Broke  gazed  pensively  at  the  feats  of  colour  embodied  in 
the  bright  hair  and  delicate  skin  of  this  new  member  of 
her  family,  which  the  slightly  flushed  appearance  of  her 
cheeks  seemed  to  enhance.  She  saw  the  fragile  grace  of 
the  slender  limbs;  the  quick  little  motions  by  which  they 
expressed  a  fawnlike  timidity;  moreover,  she  beheld  the 
air  of  tacit  appeal,  as  of  childhood  throwing  itself  upon 
the  mercy  of  maturity,  with  which  she  came  forward  to 
confront  the  mother  of  her  husband. 

Mrs.  Broke  accepted  in  silence  the  service  of  holding 
the  fur  coat  and  of  deftly  inserting  her  matronly  form 
within  it.  Without  speaking,  the  august  woman  continued 
to  regard  her  daughter-in-law  for  some  little  time  after 


174  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

she  was  prepared  to  depart.  This  creature  had  ruined 
Billy;  had  probably  ruined  them  all;  and  her  real  motive 
in  penetrating  that  morning  into  this  substratum  of  squalor 
was  to  bring  the  fact  home  to  her.  Curiosity  had  been 
the  pretext  she  had  given  even  to  herself ;  but  deep  down 
in  that  feminine  heart  lurked  the  spirit  of  revenge.  If  the 
creature  really  did  love  her  son,  as  the  wretched  fellow 
in  his  infatuation  insisted  that  she  did,  she  would  know 
how  to  deal  with  such  an  act  of  presumption.  But  as  the 
galled  woman  continued  to  look  upon  this  child  no  thought 
of  retaliation  was  there  to  sully  her. 

At  last  she  moved  to  the  door  of  the  little  room.  Sud- 
denly, however,  she  returned  and  kissed  Alice  gravely. 

"  I  think,"  she  said,  "  you  ought  to  get  away  from  this 
horrid  London  as  soon  as  you  can.  I  have  been  thinking 
out  a  little  plan.  There  is  a  tiny  cottage  near  where  I 
live ;  it  is  quite  pretty  and  on  the  top  of  a  hill.  Perhaps  I 
can  find  a  few  small  pieces  of  furniture  to  put  in  it ;  but 
you  must  give  me  a  fortnight  to  have  it  painted  and  white- 
washed, and  then  you  must  come  at  once;  and  your  aunt 
must  come  too.  There  must  be  no  more  dressmaking ;  no 
more  payments  of  three-and-sixpence  every  Friday  to  the 
landlord.  You  will  be  wise,  I  think,  to  sell  your  furniture. 
The  cost  of  taking  it  to  your  new  home  will  probably  ex- 
ceed its  value ;  but  of  course  I  do  not  mean  that  if  there 
are  things  particularly  dear  to  you,  you  are  not  to  bring 
them.  Do  so  by  all  means.  Now  here  is  another  five 
pounds  to  banish  that  dreadful  dressmaking.  And  if  you 
want  some  more  money  to  help  you  to  move  you  will  please 
write  to  me,  will  you  not?  Here  is  a  card  with  my  ad- 
dress upon  it. 

"  Good-bye  now.  I  will  write  to  tell  you  the  day  upon 
which  your  cottage  will  be  ready.  It  has  honeysuckle  and 
clematis  running  all  over  it,  and  a  little  garden  in  front 
full  of  flowers  and  fruit ;  and  there  is  a  wood  on  the  side 
of  the  hill  behind,  in  which  in  the  spring  and  summer  the 
birds  sing  all  day  and  half  the  night  as  well.  I  feel  sure 
it  will  enchant  you.  Good-bye;  and  do  not  fail  to  let  me 
know  the  day  upon  which  I  may  expect  you.    You  must 


AN  EXCURSION  INTO  SENTIMENT       175 

take  a  ticket  for  Cuttisham  at  Paddington  station  and  you 
shall  be  met  on  arrival." 

Shaking  hands  with  Miss  Sparrow  rather  less  perfunc- 
torily than  was  her  wont,  Lady  Bountiful  escaped  the 
scene  of  gratitude  she  felt  to  be  brewing  by  a  swift  retreat 
through  the  evil-smelling  passage  into  the  street. 

Her  appearance  there  was  a  great  relief  to  her  sister's 
horses,  who  had  been  pacing  up  and  down  the  thorough- 
fare for  more  than  an  hour.  The  relief  to  her  sister's 
servants  was  even  greater.  Those  serious  gentlemen  were 
inclined  to  believe  that  Mrs.  Broke  had  been  murdered  in 
that  evil-looking  house.  When  their  mistress  went  slum- 
ming never  by  any  chance  did  she  stay  longer  than  three 
minutes  in  any  particular  abode.  And  even  then  she  did 
not  go  alone,  and  it  was  always  arranged  that  the  police 
should  be  in  the  neighbourhood. 

As  the  carriage  of  Mr.  Broke's  mother  glided  out  of  the 
squalid  street,  aunt  and  niece  were  locked  in  one  another's 
arms,  faint  with  tears. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

LADY   BOUNTIFUL   AND  A   YOUNG   INTELLECTUAL 

MRS.  BROKE  had  been  shaken  to  the  foundations  of 
her  belief.  For  the  first  time  her  lines  had  been  cast 
among  the  poor.  She  was  in  the  habit  of  playing  the  part 
of  Lady  Bountiful  to  the  labouring  class  in  her  own  village, 
and  had  found  the  occupation  pastoral.  But  Hampden 
Road  was  different.  The  glimpse  it  had  afforded  of  the 
uncharted  wastes  of  a  great  city  had  a  little  amazed,  a 
little  overwhelmed  her. 

Emphatically  she  was  a  person  belonging  to  her  own 
class.  She  saw  with  their  eyes,  heard  with  their  ears, 
understood  with  their  understanding.  She  had  taken  it 
for  granted,  in  a  bland  and  not  too  definite  manner,  that 
the  denizens  of  Hampden  Road  who  were  written  down 
as  so  many  millions  in  the  statistics  of  the  population,  en- 
ijoyed  an  existence  in  some  remote  and  alien  latitude. 
They  were  certainly  known  to  exist,  because  there  was  a 
column  of  police  intelligence  in  The  Times  every  morning, 
ornaments  of  her  sex  were  known  to  be  conducting  re- 
searches into  the  subject^  and  anthropologists  referred  to 
them  in  books.  One  assumed  they  were  akin  to  the 
Fijians.  The  Fijians  were  a  coloured  people  living  in  the 
Tropics;  the  Poor  were  a  dirty  people  living  in  Unpleas- 
antness. The  Fijians  owed  their  savagery  to  their  naked- 
ness and  their  colour  to  the  heat  of  the  sun.  The  Poor 
owed  their  poverty  to  their  inherent  viciousness,  and  their 
squalor  to  a  process  of  natural  selection. 

On  going  forth  to  those  unexplored  regions  she  did  not 
expect  to  be  confronted  with  a  pair  of  intensely  human 
specimens  clinched  in  a  death  struggle  with  a  monster  that 
was  pressing  out  their  lives.     But  the  whole  thing  had 

176 


LADY  BOUNTIFUL  177 

been  so  vivid  that  she  could  not  deny  its  claim  to  rank  as 
a  page  of  experience. 

More  than  once  on  her  way  back  to  her  own  impover- 
ished family  Mrs.  Broke  shuddered  when  her  mind  re- 
verted to  the  grim  significance  of  three-and-sixpence  every 
Friday  for  the  landlord.  They  were  poor  themselves; 
indeed  of  late  they  had  come  to  look  on  their  own  poverty 
as  rather  bitter.  But  now  she  had  seen  the  two  women 
in  Hampden  Road  her  views  were  suffering  a  change.  It 
was  as  though  she  and  her  kindred  belonged  to  a  sort  of 
superhuman  caste,  which  moved  upon  an  altogether  differ- 
ent plane  of  being.  The  very  things  they  regarded  as 
vital  did  not  exist  at  all  for  the  denizens  of  Hampden 
Road.  It  was  a  little  bewildering  that  two  races  of  human 
beings,  sprung  from  a  common  Maker  and  a  common  soil, 
should  grow  up  side  by  side  and  yet  have  these  elemental 
differences. 

Mrs.  Broke  went  back  to  her  husband  and  children  in 
the  country  with  her  thoughts  in  a  measure  diverted  from 
the  wreck  of  their  fortunes.  It  seemed  cynical  for  the 
moment  to  view  Billy's  marriage  in  such  a  light  now  that 
she  had  been  made  to  feel  what  it  meant  to  the  other  party 
to  the  contract.  When  she  drove  out  of  Cuttisham  into 
the  bare  and  wind-bitten  lanes  it  was  good  to  breathe  again 
the  pure  and  shrewd  airs  of  the  country-side  after  the 
mephitic  vapours  of  London.  At  that  moment  her  one 
desire  was  never  again  to  breathe  the  nauseating  atmo- 
sphere of  Hampden  Road.  She  wanted  to  shut  it  out  of 
her  mind  forever. 

It  was  about  the  hour  of  luncheon  that  Mrs.  Broke 
turned  in  at  the  lodge  gates  of  Covenden.  On  her  way  to 
the  house  she  encountered  a  solitary  individual  walking 
towards  her.  It  was  Delia's  tutor.  Since  the  day  on 
which  he  had  taken  up  his  duties  the  young  man  had  re- 
ceived no  second  invitation  to  eat  at  her  table. 

The  sight  of  the  rather  insignificant  figure  touched  a 
chord  in  her.  To-day,  for  the  first  time  in  her  life,  she 
was  troubled  with  a  faint  misgiving  as  to  the  infallibility 
of  her  judgment.     Three  days  ago  she  would  have  lent  no 


178  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

countenance  to  the  suggestion  that  her  beautifully  balanced 
mind  could  lead  her  astray.  Her  experience  was  too  pro- 
found, her  knowledge  too  wide.  Did  they  not  render  her 
invulnerable  to  error?  This  morning,  however,  she  was 
not  so  sure. 

There  came  into  her  mind  a  jcurious  analogy  between 
the  man  walking  towards  her  with  his  eyes  bent  on 
the  ground  and  the  two  women  she  had  lately  seen  in 
Hampden  Road,  London,  N.  His  slightness,  his  paleness, 
his  self-effacing,  air  all  ministered  to  the  comparison. 
Thoughts  of  an  uncomfortable  intimacy  sprang  loose  in 
her.  Somewhat  insolently  they  began  to  draw  a  compari- 
son between  his  lot  and  her  own. 

She  had  had  a  comfortable  brougham  and  a  fleet  pair 
of  horses  to  bear  her  the  four  miles  from  Cuttisham. 
This  young  man,  moving  in  his  humbler  plane,  would  have 
to  be  borne  the  same  four  miles  on  the  soles  of  his  feet. 
In  ten  minutes  she  would  be  sitting  down  to  a  solid  meal ; 
this  young  man,  if  he  pursued  a  diligent  course,  might 
hope  to  follow  her  example  in  something  under  an  hour 
and  a  quarter.  In  his  case,  however,  the  nature  of  the 
meal  might  prove  less  satisfying.  He  had  already  walked 
four  miles  that  morning,  and  had  spent  several  hours  since 
in  an  exacting  form  of  labour.  She,  on  the  other  hand, 
began  the  duties  of  her  day  when  she  drank  a  cup  of  tea 
in  bed  at  a  quarter  to  eight.  She  had  submitted  to  be 
dressed  by  somebody  else  about  an  hour  later;  had  had 
breakfast  at  half -past  nine;  had  spent  the  remainder  of 
the  morning  in  a  little  gossip,  a  little  shopping,  in  driving 
to  the  station,  and  in  occupation  of  the  cushions  of  a  first- 
class  compartment. 

It  is  true  that  this  picture  of  their  divergent  lots  was  a 
little  over-coloured.  But  that  was  essential ;  a  trick  of  the 
impertinent  person,  the  artist.  Without  a  measure  of 
judicious  exaggeration  no  picture  can  count  on  its  appeal. 
A  parallel  less  graphic  and  the  humane  lady  would  not 
now  have  been  in  the  act  of  demanding  of  herself  the  rea- 
son why  this  man  could  not  have  received  the  courtesy  at 


LADY  BOUNTIFUL  179 

her  hands  of  being  allowed  to  sit  at  her  table  every  time 
he  came  to  her  house. 

When  the  young  man  came  near,  and  took  his  eyes  from 
the  ground  and  looked  at  her  vaguely,  with  a  faintly  per- 
ceptible doubt  as  to  whether  she  would  choose  to  honour 
him  with  a  bow,  Mrs.  Broke  stopped  her  carriage.  She 
beckoned  to  him  to  come  to  her. 

"  Good  morning,  Mr.  Porter.  Will  you  not  return  to 
luncheon  ?  " 

The  young  man  seemed  a  little  startled. 

*'  Oh,  thank  you,"  he  said,  as  though  his  mind  was  far 
away,  "  but  I  don't  think — I  don't  think  I  need  any." 

"  But  surely — after  having  walked  so  far  and  having 
had  such  a  tiresome  morning?" 

The  young  man  smiled. 

"  Oh,  thank  you,  but  I  am  able  to  do  three  things  at  the 
same  time.     I  eat,  I  walk,  I  contemplate." 

With  a  laugh  that  was  quite  pleasant  he  exhibited  a 
small  packet  of  white  tissue  paper. 

Mrs.  Broke  smiled  her  smile  of  slow  dazzlement. 

"  You  are  indeed  a  man  of  resources,"  she  said  archly. 
"  But  if  you  do  not  return  with  me  to-day  I  shall  think 
you  are  angry  with  me.  You  have  been  coming  out  here 
for  more  than  a  month,  and  yet  my  unpardonable  stupidity 
has  driven  you  to  these  expedients.  But,  really,  I  must 
blame  you  a  little  also.  You  ought  to  have  stayed  to 
luncheon  every  day  as  a  matter  of  course.  Promise  me 
you  will  never,  never  wait  again  for  an  invitation.  Get  in, 
please,  and  say  you  forgive  me." 

In  the  face  of  such  a  humble  and  charming  insistence, 
Mr.  Porter  was  fain  to  get  in  and  say  he  did  forgive  the 
mellifluous  lady.  He  sat  opposite  to  her  in  a  corner  of  the 
brougham  and  she  prattled  to  him  dulcetly. 

At  the  luncheon  table  the  family  was  in  full  assembly. 
Mrs.  Broke  having  embraced  everybody  in  a  gracious  bow, 
took  her  usual  seat  at  the  end  of  the  table  and  placed  the 
guest  on  her  right  hand.  And  there  was  a  fortunate 
aspect  to  her  hardly   agreeable  preoccupation  with  the 


i8o  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

young  man.  His  presence,  under  her  wing,  freed  her  for 
the  time  being  from  embarrassing  questions  as  to  the  na- 
ture of  the  business  that  had  summoned  her  to  London  so 
suddenly. 

"  I  wish  you  would  tell  me  a  little  about  your  work,  Mr. 
Porter,"  she  said,  with  her  quite  charming  air.  "  That  is 
if  you  don't  mind  talking  shop." 

"  I  don't  know  anything  I  can  tell  you,  that  is  anything 
that  is  of  interest,"  said  the  young  man,  with  a  touch  of 
shyness  that  somehow  saved  him  from  the  charge  of  false 
modesty. 

"  I  am  sure  you  are  a  man  of  ambition." 

"  Yes — at  least  I  hope  I  am." 

The  skilled  tactician  had  touched  a  chord,  it  seemed. 

"  The  ambition  I  am  sure  of  all  generous  hearts — to 
leave  the  world  a  little  better  than  one  finds  it." 

The  young  man  coloured  with  pleasure.  The  caressing 
quality  of  the  charming  voice  made  an  effect  of  music  in  a 
mind  so  delicately  attuned. 

"  Oh,  yes,  but  how  terribly  difficult  it  must  be  to  do 
that." 

"  Who  was  it  who  said  that  difficulty  is  the  true  elixir 
of  life?" 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  the  young  man,  with  a  simplicity 
that  she  rather  liked.     "  But  it  seems  a  fine  saying." 

"  You  find  your  own  work  very  difficult,  I  arn  sure,  and 
I  am  sure  you  regard  it  very  seriously  ?  " 

"  I  will  not  pretend  that  I  have  ever  found  it  easy," 
said  the  young  man,  "  nor  do  I  find  it  easy  to  describe. 
Unless  another  feels  about  it  almost  exactly  as  one  feels 
about  it  oneself,  perhaps  it  were  wiser  not  to  attempt  the 
task." 

Lady  Bountiful's  tone  grew  a  shade  more  firm. 

"  I  do  not  wonder,"  she  said,  with  so  perfect  an  inflec- 
tion of  humility  that  it  could  only  have  sounded  another 
note  in  the  most  educated  ear,  "  that  you  should — shall  we 
say  distrust? — such  feeble  attempts  to  ascend  to  your  own 
plane,  I  suppose.  It  is  quite  true  that  as  a  sex  we  are  apt 
to  overrate  our  mental  powers." 


LADY  BOUNTIFUL  i8i 

"  I  wasn't  thinking  of  that,"  said  the  young  man,  with 
a  simpHcity  that  disarmed  her.  "  I  wasn't  thinking  of  the 
power  of  your  intellect,  but  simply  of  its  emotional  charac- 
ter.    Our  minds  are  not — are  not  set  in  the  same  key." 

"  May  I  confess  myself  a  little  mystified." 

"It  is  simply  that  we  don't  approach  literature  from 
the  same  angle." 

"  My  mystification  increases." 

"  Please' do  not  think  I  underrate  your  mental  capacity. 
But  I  think  you  read  books  for  what  you  can  take  from 
them;  you  do  not  read  them  for  what  you  can  bring  to 
them." 

"Surely  a  paradoxical  saying?" 

"  Paradox  is  only  truth  walking  backwards.  But  I  have 
not  expressed  myself  very  clearly.  I  wanted  to  suggest 
that  every  mind  does  not  go  to  a  book  in  quest  of  the  hard 
fact." 

"  But  surely  one  goes  to  a  book  for  the  acquisition  of 
knowledge." 

"  Or  for  an  adventure  of  the  soul." 

"  A  question  of  terms,  is  it  not  ?  " 

"  You  must  please  forgive  me  if  I  don't  agree.  The 
greatest  of  books  are  written  in  cypher;  they  cannot  be 
read  at  all  without  a  key.  And  the  key  is  your  immortal 
soul  and  mine." 

By  the  exercise  of  those  subtle  arts  of  which  she  was 
mistress  she  was  already  beginning  to  surprise  this  shy 
soul  into  self-expression.  Perhaps  the  operation  was  a 
little  malicious.  At  any  rate  it  amused  her  "  to  draw  him 
out."  When  it  came  to  fundamentals  her  mind  was  hard, 
and  from  the  first  it  had  been  instinctively  hostile  to  "  the 
young  intellectual." 

"  Mr.  Porter,  you  are  a  poet  ?  " 

The  young  man  shook  his  head  rather  sadly. 

"  Alas !  there  are  no  wings  to  my  Pegasus.  He  cannot 
soar.     The  empyrean  is  not  for  him." 

"At  any  rate  you  practise  the  art  of  literature?" 

"  After  my  fashion." 

"  Tell  me  what  great  end  you  have  in  view." 


i82  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

Quite  suddenly  the  face  of  the  young  man  was  suffused 
with  light. 

"  I  think  I  would  be  like  Francis  Bacon,"  he  said.  "  I 
think  I  would  take  all  knowledge  to  be  my  province.  But 
this  is  vain.  I  am  afraid  I  am  a  little  flushed  with  my  first 
victory." 

"  Ah !  " — the  charming  voice  was  irresistible — "  do  tell 
me  of  that." 

The  question  seemed  to  touch  the  young  man  as  with 
fire.  In  a  gush  of  words  he  described  how  he  had  con- 
ceived certain  abstract  speculations  upon  truth,  how  he 
had  embodied  them  after  months  of  joyous  interminable 
labour  in  an  essay  which  had  been  printed  in  the  Interna- 
tional Review,  how  he  had  received  an  offer  of  a  post  on 
the  staff  of  that  famous  journal,  and  how  to  the  offer  was 
attached  a  princely  salary  for  one  of  his  way  of  life. 

'*  Of  course,  Mr.  Porter,  you  declined  the  offer  with 
scorn  ?  " 

"  Oh,  no ;  on  the  contrary  it  has  been  accepted  with 
gratitude." 

"  That  is  very  singular,  is  it  not  ?  One  has  always  un- 
derstood that  the  true  artist  despises  the  sordid  pounds 
and  shillings." 

*'  Not  if  he  has  been  through  the  mill,  I  think." 

"  Have  you  been  through  the  mill,  Mr.  Porter,  if  the 
question  is  a  fair  one  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  the  young  man  quite  simply. 

"  Pray  tell  me — this  is  most  thrilling !  You  interest  me 
painfully." 

"  There  is  so  little  to  tell." 

All  at  once  the  young  man  had  grown  wary.  In  place 
of  the  sudden  fire  which  in  spite  of  Mrs.  Brokers  sense  of 
her  own  tacit  hostility  had  amused  and  charmed  her,  a 
barrier  of  impenetrable  reserve  was  between  them  now. 

Mrs.  Broke  was  quick  to  tack. 

"  I  suppose  now  you  have  accepted  this  suggestion  of 
the  editor's  you  will  turn  your  face  towards  the  Mecca 
of  the  men  of  letters?" 

"  I  am  engaged  to  take  up  my  duties  in  London  in  a 


LADY  BOUNTIFUL  183 

month's  time.  I  am  glad  to  have  had  this  opportunity  of 
talking  to  you,  since  after  then,  I  fear,  it  will  no  longer 
be  possible  for  me  to  coach  Miss  Delia.  I  have  written  to 
Lady  Bosket  to  say  so." 

"  I  am  sure  it  will  be  a  misfortune  for  the  child,  al- 
though she  has  had  the  privilege  of  receiving  a  certain 
amount  of  your  instruction.  I  am  afraid  you  found  her 
hopeless." 

"  On  the  contrary,  I  could  not  have  wished  for  an  apter 
pupil." 

"  This  is  praise  indeed." 

"  I'll  confess  that  Miss  Delia  has  interested  me  enor- 
mously. She  is  the  first  of  her  sex  whom  I  have  come  to 
know  at  all  intimately,  and  it  has  been  an  experience. 
Besides,  I  have  a  feeling — you  must  please  forgive  it — 
that  people  may  be  a  little  inclined  to  underrate  her.  She 
does  not  deserve  to  be  underrated ;  her  sympathies  are  so 
quick,  so  remarkable." 

"  I  am  so  glad.  One  had  nearly  made  up  one's  mind 
that  the  child  was  wholly  devoid  of  intelligence." 

"  It  is  painful  to  hear  you  say  that.  The  graces  of  her 
mind  may  not  be  set  forth  for  all  to  read,  but  may  they 
not  be  the  more  exquisite  on  that  very  account?  In 
strong,  wise,  and  judicious  hands  hers  might  prove  a  very 
noble  life.  But " — the  voice  of  Delia's  tutor  had  sunk  in 
the  oddest  manner — "  I  confess  that  I  tremble  for  her." 

"  One  had  not  guessed  that  the  child's  nature  would 
make  these  demands,'*  said  Mrs.  Broke  lightly.  "  I  trem- 
ble for  her  myself." 

So  absorbed  had  these  two  alien  persons  been  in  their 
conversation  that  they  had  already  long  outstayed  every- 
body at  the  luncheon  table.  Mrs.  Broke  was  not  without 
a  sense  of  slightly  malicious  pleasure.  The  young  man 
might  tacitly  despise  her  intellect,  but  she  knew  how  to 
toy  with  his  a  little.  Her  art,  masquerading  in  the  livery 
of  a  ready  sympathy,  had  broken  down  much  of  his  re- 
serve. She  had  made  him  talk.  At  the  same  time  he 
had  interested  her  keenly. 

When  at  last  they  went  to  the  drawing-room  the  re- 


i84  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

doubtable  lady  was  in  better  heart  than  she  had  been  all 
that  day.  In  a  sense  her  talk  with  the  young  man  had 
restored  her.  She  had  a  sense  of  exhilaration.  This  was 
a  man  out  of  the  common.  She  was  glad  to  have  spent  an 
hour  in  talk  with  him.  He  had  an  uplifting  vigour  like  a 
breeze  from  the  mountains. 

As  a  manifestation  of  this  new  interest  he  had  aroused 
in  her,  she  asked  the  young  man  presently  whether  he  had 
seen  the  remains  of  the  old  hall,  in  an  outlying  corner  of 
the  park.  They  were  said  to  have  an  antiquarian  value. 
He  had  not,  but  would  very  much  like  to  do  so.  Delia 
was  thereupon  summoned,  and  it  was  suggested  that  she 
should  take  her  tutor  to  see  the  ruin.  They  were  soon  on 
their  way. 

'*  It  is  long  since  one  was  so  arrested  by  a  personality," 
was  Mrs.  Brokers  mental  comment  when  they  had  gone. 
"  There  is  more  in  that  young  man  than  one  thought." 

Suddenly  the  wise  lady  laughed,  perhaps  even  a  little 
uncomfortably.  A  fantastic  thought  had  crept  into  that 
sagacious  mind. 

"  Was  it  not  a  little  foolhardy,  was  it  not  almost  like 
courting  a  second  disaster  to  throw  the  child  into  the  com- 
pany of  such  a  firebrand  ?  " 

The  idea  was  not  to  be  treated  seriously;  but  all  the 
same,  so  inveterate  was  her  habit  of  wisdom,  that  she  was 
by  no  means  sure  that  she  would  have  proposed  this  expe- 
dition had  it  occurred  to  her  sooner. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

TWO   ON   A   TOWER 

FOOTING  it  over  the  young  and  green  grass  of  spring 
Delia  and  her  tutor  were  not  long  in  crossing  the 
ravine  and  in  pressing  up  the  steep  hill  on  which  was  set 
all  that  remained  of  the  former  stronghold  of  this  ancient 
race  of  Broke.  It  was  noteworthy  that  this  old  hall  or 
castle  had  this  in  common  with  other  great  houses  of  an- 
tiquity: its  architect  had  chosen  one  of  the  fair  spots  of 
earth  on  which  to  set  it. 

It  stood  on  a  grass-grown  plateau,  and  was  like  a  senti- 
nel in  the  view  of  the  miles  upon  miles  of  rich  pasture 
land  that  stretched  away  beneath.  The  lush  meadows,  fat 
with  increase,  drowsed  below.  A  clear  stream,  glorious 
in  the  sunlight,  meandered  from  little  copse  to  little  copse, 
in  which  the  spring  birds  sang ;  the  steeples  of  churches  in 
neighbouring  villages  were  remotely  visible,  "  bosomed 
high  in  tufted  trees."  All  things  seemed  to  minister  to 
the  uncommon  wisdom  which  had  chosen  for  a  hermitage 
this  fair  place. 

"  Ah,  those  old  builders,  what  a  cunning  they  had !  " 
said  the  young  man  as  he  toiled  up  to  a  piece  of  crumbling 
masonry  over  which  the  bracken  had  grown.  "  They  only 
chose  the  places  fit  to  receive  of  their  best.  It  is  not  easy 
to  get  here,  but  once  on  these  heights  one  is  more  than 
repaid.  You  come  of  a  favoured  race,  Miss  Broke.  Who 
can  conceive  a  thing  more  delightful  than  to  have  an  en- 
chanted castle,  as  I  am  sure  this  must  have  been,  to  dwell 
in  for  a  thousand  years  ?  " 

"  I  do  not  think  we  have  been  any  happier  because  of 
it,"  said  Delia.  "  It  has  made  no  difference  to  us  as  far 
as  I  can  see." 

*'  One  would  have  expected  it  to  breed  a  race  of  poets 

185 


i86  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

and  seers,  grave  worshippers  of  nature,  and  those  who 
have  never  slept  in  their  endeavours  to  surprise  her 
secrets." 

"  Instead  of  which,"  said  Delia,  who  long  ago  had 
learned  to  talk  with  him  in  terms  of  an  ampler  equality 
than  when  she  had  known  him  first,  "  it  seems  to  have 
bred  a  race  whose  highest  pleasure  is  to  destroy  her  work. 
If  as  a  race  we  have  been  at  all  distinguished  it  has  been 
as  soldiers  and  hunters — savage  men  who  have  had  a  pas- 
sion for  killing  every  living  thing.'* 

"  A  severe  indictment." 

He  caught  himself  musing  on  her  strange  air  of  vehe- 
mence. 

"  I  should  not  have  found  myself  making  it  a  month 
ago,"  said  Delia,  half  to  herself  and  hardly  intending  that 
he  should  hear. 

Looking  back  on  that  short  period  which  yet  seemed  so 
long  a  space,  and  in  a  measure  so  fraught  with  destiny,  she 
guessed  how  great  was  the  change  in  herself.  She  had 
developed  by  inordinate  strides.  She  was  a  child  then, 
a  little  timid  thing  peeping  out  of  the  door  of  the  nursery ; 
she  was  now  a  woman  feeling  the  first  premonitory 
stiflings  of  the  world  upon  her  heart.  It  was  not  quite  so 
easy  to  breathe  God's  air  as  it  had  been  a  month  ago. 

To-day  there  could  be  no  doubt  she  was  unhappy.  She 
was  too  simple  to  disguise  the  fact  that  her  friend's  an- 
nouncement of  his  going  away  to  London  filled  her  with  a 
sense  of  impending  loss.  From  the  first  morning  of  his 
coming  she  had  never  been  quite  the  same.  There  was  in 
him  that  touch  of  mystery  that  was  so  haunting,  that  per- 
sonal glamour  which  seems  to  cast  a  spell.  It  was  not  at- 
traction, not  fascination  altogether;  but  a  stranger,  more 
magical  quality. 

Not  again  had  she  wept  because  she  could  not  go  hunt- 
ing since  that  first  memorable  morning  of  his  coming, 
when  he  had  wrung  her  small  secrets  out  of  her,  and 
caused  her  to  burn  her  treasures.  She  knew  that  long  ago 
she  had  learned  to  recognize  his  footfall.  She  also  knew 
that  if  she  caught  the  tones  of  his  voice  at  a  moment  when 


TWO  ON  A  TOWER  187 

they  were  unexpected  she  was  thrilled  in  a  manner  she 
had  never  been  conscious  of  before.  These  were  slight 
things,  but  in  the  present  unquietness  of  her  heart  they 
had  the  power  to  make  her  unhappy.  Were  they  not  signs 
that  she  was  journeying  perilously  into  that  mysterious 
country  from  whose  bourne  no  traveller  returns  unscarred. 

Unconsciously  the  days  of  his  coming  had  grown  to  be 
underlined  in  her  heart.  Those  days  on  which  he  did  not 
come  were  soulless,  incomplete.  On  those  days  there 
seemed  no  particular  reason  why  she  should  ever  get  out 
of  bed  in  the  morning  and  go  through  the  tedious  business 
of  putting  on  her  clothes.  Even  hunting  had  begun  to 
lose  its  hold  upon  her.  It  took  on  the  same  drab  hues  as 
the  rest  of  life's  diurnal  affairs  when  her  friend  did  not 
walk  out  from  Cuttisham  to  bewilder  and  enchant  her. 

He  seemed  to  move  on  a  higher  plane  than  the  rest  of 
her  little  world.  He  seemed  to  carry  a  special  atmosphere 
about  with  him.  Under  the  shy  diffidence  of  his  manner 
he  was  very  certain  of  himself,  perfectly  assured  in  all  he 
said  and  did.  He  did  not  appear  to  know  what  vacillation 
meant;  and  it  was  impossible  to  deny  a  secret  to  those 
gravely  humorous  eyes.  Tender  eyes  they  were  too. 
There  were  things  that  could  melt  them  and  give  them  a 
look  she  had  learned  to  watch  for.  They  were  not  given 
to  passion.  But  sometimes  at  rare  moments  a  kind  of 
liquid  fire  ran  in  them  which  thrilled  her  own  soul  into 
flame. 

Time  and  again  had  she  been  obliged  to  state  to  herself 
that  he  was  a  much  more  complex  kind  of  being  than  the 
only  other  men  with  whom  she  was  familiar,  her  father, 
her  brother,  and  her  Uncle  Charles.  There  seemed  to  be 
finer  shades  of  meaning  in  him ;  he  seemed  to  have  a  more 
developed  life.  There  was  constant  occupation  in  trying 
to  fathom  what  was  implied  by  his  strange  personality. 
When  she  looked  at  her  father  at  the  breakfast-table  there 
he  was  as  plain  as  his  newspaper;  if  she  glanced  at  her 
mother  and  sisters  it  was  easy  to  tell  exactly  who  and 
what  they  were.  It  was  only  since  she  had  come  to  know 
this  man  that  she  had  been  prone  to  these  speculations. 


i88  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

Somehow  she  feh  that  such  behaviour  was  weak  and  un- 
worthy, but  do  what  she  would,  she  was  thinking  con- 
tinually of  this  new  and  mysterious  friend. 

Her  companion  sat  down  on  a  fragment  of  ruined  wall, 
and  took  off  his  hat.  There  was  sweat  on  his  forehead. 
He  made  no  secret  of  the  fact  that  the  ascent  had  taxed 
him  a  little.  He  laughed  at  his  plight,  particularly  as 
Delia  was  far  from  sharing  it.  She  looked  as  cool  as  a 
young  fawn  that  has  merely  leaped  over  a  brook. 

"  This  is  where  you  athletes  have  the  pull  of  a  book- 
worm," he  said.  "  You  don't  seem  to  breathe  at  all  and 
you  move  like  a  bird." 

"  I  didn't  think  such  a  little  climb  would  distress  you," 
said  Delia.  "  We  ought  not  to  have  come  up  so  fast.  I 
am  so  sorry." 

"  It's  odd,"  he  said,  "  how  any  little  physical  inferiority 
seems  to  hurt.  I  hate  to  be  sitting  like  this  while  you 
don't  seem  to  be  a  penny  the  worse.  I  think  I  must  go 
into  training,  as  you  athletes  would  say,  although  walking 
out  here  from  Cuttisham  three  times  a  week  had  done  me 
a  lot  of  good.  But  I  am  afraid  I  have  a  rooted  dislike  to 
physical  exertion." 

"  How  strange ! "  said  Delia,  "  when  perfect  fitness  is 
such  a  joy.  It  is  better  than  anything  I  know  to  feel  one's 
self  equal  to  anything.  I  hope  you  don't  despise  the  out- 
of-doors  person." 

"  On  the  contrary,  I  admire  them  immensely — their 
health,  their  strength,  their  wonderful  nerve.  Still,  I'll  not 
deny  that  they  also  ruffle  my  temper  a  bit,  for  I  simply  hate 
having  to  admit  my  inferiority  to  any  human  being." 

*'  Arrogance,"  said  Delia,  with  a  wise  little  shake  of  the 
head. 

"  I  agree,  I  agree !  " 

"  I  don't  think  I  would  ever  accuse  you  of  arrogance 
really,"  said  Delia,  determined  to  wipe  this  speck  of  dust 
off  her  idol. 

"  You  would  be  wrong,"  said  her  friend,  enjoying  her 
sudden  descent  into  the  serious.  "  It  is  the  besetting  sin 
of  the  tribe.    We  egotists  never  hesitate  to  pit  ourselves 


TWO  ON  A  TOWER  189 

in  a  comparison  with  others,  and  when  we  draw  it,  it  is 
not  to  their  advantage,  I  can  assure  you.  If  Such-a-one 
can  do  a  certain  thing,  I  can  do  it,  is  what  we  say.  It  is 
wrong,  it  is  deplorable,  but — ^but  il  ya  les  defauts  de  nos 
qualites." 

"  I  am  sure  you  could  do  anything  you  made  up  your 
mind  to  do,"  said  Delia  gently. 

"  Please,  please,  don't  make  me  vainer  than  I  am  al- 
ready," he  said. 

But  her  earnestness  flattered  even  more  than  it  amused 
him. 

It  was  during  the  next  moment  that  Delia  had  an  in- 
spiration. There  was  a  hazardous  feat  connected  with 
this  ruin  which  she  and  her  sisters  were  never  weary  of 
attempting.  The  ruin  itself  consisted  of  a  single  frag- 
ment of  wall  some  twenty  feet  high.  A  narrow  and  dan- 
gerous parapet  formed  the  top  of  it;  and  at  the  extreme 
end  the  crumbling  remains  of  what  had  once  been  a  hunt- 
ing tower  rose  sheer  to  the  sky,  eighty  feet  at  least  from 
the  top  of  the  wall  and  a  hundred  feet  from  the  bank  of 
green  earth  on  which  they  were  now  standing.  Seen  from 
this  spot  it  looked  a  most  insecure  and  dizzy  height. 
Only  the  ivy  with  which  it  was  clad  seemed  to  hold  it  to- 
gether. The  tower  itself  was  so  bat-ridden  and  far  gone 
in  decay  that  its  mere  retention  of  the  power  to  keep 
itself  upright  seemed  an  open  defiance  of  the  law  of 
gravity. 

So  often  had  Delia  and  her  sisters  made  the  compara- 
tively easy  ascent  of  the  lower  wall  itself,  and  so  often 
had  they  walked  the  coping  that  ran  along  the  top  as  far 
as  the  base  of  the  tower,  that  they  could  now  perform  the 
feat  with  the  certainty  of  a  tight-rope  walker  crossing  a 
chasm.  To  the  uninitiated  it  had  a  delicious  appearance 
of  daring,  but  they  had  practised  the  trick  so  often  that 
it  had  become  as  simple  as  the  act  of  springing  into  a 
saddle  out  of  the  hand  of  their  father. 

The  hunting-tower  itself,  however,  was  a  different  mat- 
ter. Times  without  number  had  they  set  out  to  reach  the 
weird  emblem  in  the  form  of  a  cross  that  stood  at  the 


190  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

top,  on  a  quaint  little  platform.  Not  one  of  them,  how- 
ever, had  ever  succeeded  in  making  her  foothold  suffi- 
ciently good  in  that  decrepit  masonry  covered  with  ivy 
and  moss,  which  was  its  only  staircase,  to  scale  the  full 
eighty  feet  of  this  crazy,  wind-shaken  object.  She  who 
accomplished  that  hazardous  task  would  be  held  in  ever- 
lasting honour  by  her  sisters.  Up  till  now  the  indomitable 
Joan  it  was  who  had  touched  the  highest  point.  Fitted 
physically  no  better  than  the  others  to  enjoy  the  distinc- 
tion, by  sheer  force  of  character  she  yet  contrived  to  do 
so.  The  point  she  had  touched  was  several  feet  higher 
than  that  achieved  by  even  the  fearless  Philippa. 

It  hardly  admitted  of  question  that  the  plight  in  which 
her  friend  was  displayed  gave  Delia  the  idea.  In  mind 
she  felt  herself  to  be  his  inferior  to  a  icruel  degree.  But 
physically  it  was  otherwise.  There  was  one  point  at  least 
on  which  she  would  not  have  to  yield  to  his  distressing 
superiority.  The  desire  to  make  the  most  of  that  advan- 
tage was  eminently  feminine,  nor  was  it  less  so  that  she 
should  aspire  to  shine  in  the  eyes  of  one  who  in  his  own 
person  combined  all  the  Christian  virtues.  He  had  told 
her  that  feats  of  athletic  skill  aroused  his  envy.  Would 
it  not  be  sweet  to  excite  it  by  a  daring  he  could  not  hope 
to  emulate? 

With  creatures  of  impulse  thought  is  action.  The  idea 
in  her  mind,  it  would  not  allow  her  to  reflect.  In  a  mo- 
ment, with  a  joyous,  defiant,  carolling  little  laugh  she  ran 
to  the  wall,  and  before  the  unsuspecting  young  man  had 
time  to  observe,  her  birdlike  feet  were  scrambling  up 
stone  by  stone  through  the  moss  and  crannies.  By  the 
time  he  had  risen  from  his  place  on  the  bank  to  see  what 
she  was  doing,  she  was  already  on  the  parapet  of  the  wall 
above  his  head. 

"  I  say,  I  say  1    What  are  you  doing !  " 

Her  wild  feet  were  in  motion  already  along  the  narrow 
coping.  Gayly,  exquisitely  supple  of  poise,  she  glided 
across  as  one  who  exults  in  unconsciousness  of  peril.  It 
was  superb;  but  the  startled  witness  felt  already  a  shock 
of  bewilderment. 


TWO  ON  A  TOWER  191 

"  I  say,  I  say,  Miss  Broke,  what  are  you  doing ! " 

Miss  Broke  turned  an  apple-blossom  cheek  over  her 
shoulder  and  proceeded  to  look  down  upon  her  friend  with 
an  arch  laugh  lurking  in  the  corners  of  her  lips.  The  notes 
of  his  alarm,  floating  up  from  below,  were  as  music  in 
her  ears. 

"  You  must  come  down,  you  know.  It  isn't  safe,  I  am 
sure  it  isn't  safe ! " 

She  paid  no  heed.  The  madness  that  had  come  upon 
her  was  increased  by  his  anxiety.  Amid  trills  of  laughter 
her  winged  feet  bore  her  along  the  wall.  Short  skirts  and 
bright  stockings  twinkled  about  the  slender  ankles  like 
the  motions  of  a  gay-breasted  bird  falling  and  rocketing. 
The  fair  curves  swayed  in  the  sunlight.  Once  she  made  a 
wicked  pretence  of  missing  her  foothold,  and  as  the  heart 
of  the  spectator  leaped  in  dismay,  she  swung  round  on  her 
audacious  heels,  and  met  his  eyes  with  a  face  as  frankly 
mischievous  as  ever  emblazoned  the  vaunting  spirit  of 
woman.  She  looked  as  tantalizing  as  a  squirrel,  as  bold  as 
a  robin,  as  sure-footed  as  a  chamois  leaping  along  the  face 
of  the  Alps. 

Before  he  could  guess  what  she  meant  to  do,  she  had 
reached  the  base  of  the  hunting-tower  at  the  far  end  of  the 
wall.  At  once  the  clever  feet  began  to  climb  that  sheer 
pinnacle.  In  vain  did  he  call  to  her,  now  in  tones  of  hor- 
ror. She  did  not  stop,  nor  hesitate,  nor  once  glance  back. 
The  madness  that  had  taken  her  had  intensified  its  grip. 

It  was  wonderful  that  she  was  able  to  find  so  many  holds 
for  her  toes  along  the  sheer  front  of  masonry.  The  ivy 
crumpled,  and  now  and  then  gave  way  under  her  hands ; 
the  dust  was  shaken  out  of  the  moss;  bats  flopped  about 
in  the  upper  air ;  the  very  crazy  old  tower  itself  appeared 
to  sway.  Up  and  up  went  the  mad  thing,  not  hearing  now 
the  entreaties,  the  commands  from  below.  The  horrified 
witness  began  to  lose  his  self-control. 

"  Oh,^  stop,  stop,  stop !  "  he  shouted. 

Nothing,  however,  could  check  that  ascent.  Grasping 
the  tenacious  wild  growths,  and  tucking  her  toes  in  the 
invisible  niches  where  the  mortar  had  crumbled  from  be- 


192  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

tween  the  stones,  she  went  hand  above  hand,  up  and  up. 

So  wild  her  attack  on  that  sheer  surface,  and  such  the 
speed  with  which  she  had  drawn  herself  up,  that  now  she 
swung  a  truly  perilous  height  from  the  earth,  more  than 
two-thirds  of  the  way  towards  the  platform  at  the  top. 
And  it  may  have  been  that  the  young  man's  terror-stricken 
tones  came  to  her  now,  for  here  it  was  that  for  the  first 
time  she  paused.  She  paused  an  instant  to  look  back. 
In  that  instant  she  was  lost. 

Swinging  in  mid-air  between  earth  and  sky,  the  impulse 
that  had  carried  her  so  far  left  her  as  suddenly  as  it  came. 
The  power  to  move  one  way  or  the  other  wholly  deserted 
her  in  that  brief  but  fatal  moment  of  her  looking  back. 
She  had  no  longer  the  volition  for  the  upward  course ;  and 
the  knowledge  she  now  had  of  an  abyss  yawning  under- 
neath, completely  paralysed  her  will.  She  hung  in  the 
wind,  like  a  leaf,  impotent,  fluttering,  some  seventy  feet 
in  mid-air. 

It  needed  not  her  white  face,  nor  the  faint  cry  that 
reached  him  to  tell  Porter  what  had  occurred.  As  she 
hung  swaying  outwards  into  space  it  seemed  that  any 
moment  she  would  grow  too  faint  to  keep  her  hold  and 
that  she  would  be  cast  dead  at  his  feet.  Porter  was  no 
athlete,  but  he  had  a  clear,  strong  intelligence.  And  this 
terrible  danger  seemed  to  translate  him.  He  cried  to  her 
in  a  loud,  confident  tone  of  reassurance: 

*'  Hold  on  a  minute,  and  I  will  come  to  you." 

That  was  the  beginning  of  a  struggle  between  life  and 
death.  The  first  fact  that  penetrated  Porter's  mind  was 
that  to  reach  the  tower  direct  from  the  mound  of  earth  on 
which  he  stood  was  impossible.  He  must  go  to  the  farther 
end  of  the  wall,  where  the  climb  to  the  parapet  was  not 
difficult  for  an  active  man.  Porter  could  not  claim  to  be 
that,  but  under  the  goad  of  fear  he  clambered  up  to  the 
top  of  the  wall  without  delay.  Once  there  he  had  to  go 
along  the  narrow,  and,  to  him,  unnerving  coping  that  led 
to  the  base  of  the  tower.  He  could  not  trust  himself  to 
walk  upright  across  it,  therefore  he  went  down  on  all- 
fours,  and  made  his  way  upon  his  hands  and  knees.    This 


TWO  ON  A  TOWER  193 

mode  was  much  the  surer,  although  it  cut  the  palms  of  his 
hands  and  pierced  the  knees  of  his  trousers. 

The  wretched  girl  was  still  clinging  half -senseless  to  the 
side  of  the  tower  by  the  time  Porter  found  himself  beneath 
it.  She  hung  now  some  fifty  feet  above  him ;  he  had  the 
peculiar  physical  awkwardness  that  nature  inflicts  upon 
the  thinker;  the  innate  physical  cowardice  and  shrinking 
from  danger  which  is  often  the  penalty  of  the  gift  of 
imagination;  his  heart  beat  cruelly;  his  breast  rose  and 
fell  in  the  painful  effort  to  get  breath;  the  sweat  leapt 
out  of  every  pore ;  his  limbs  were  as  paper ;  and  yet  if  the 
girl  was  not  to  be  dashed  lifeless  to  the  ground  without 
his  lifting  a  finger  to  save  her,  he  would  be  compelled  to 
swing  his  leaden  bulk  into  space  and  ascend  the  sheer 
face  of  the  tower. 

He  did  not  hesitate.  Involuntarily  he  realized  the  grim 
significance  of  the  adage,  "  He  who  hesitates  is  lost."  An 
instant  for  reflection;  an  instant  for  reason  to  approve, 
for  common  sense  to  sanction,  and  his  effort  would  not 
be  made.  A  moment's  dalliance  while  he  considered  his 
grievous  physical  limitations  in  their  relation  to  this  hope- 
less and  appalling  task  and  Delia  would  be  lying  dead  on 
the  ground. 

With  all  the  force  of  his  will  he  surrendered  himself  to 
a  single  idea.  If  she,  a  child,  can  climb  up  there,  I, 
Alfred  Porter,  can  climb  there  also. 

Even  in  the  moment  the  young  man  made  his  resolve  he 
knew  that  his  labouring  flesh  was  as  water;  but  the  in- 
domitable will  was  stronger  in  him  than  the  clay.  He 
forced  himself  to  rise  from  his  bleeding  knees  and  hands, 
attacked  the  crevices  before  him  with  his  toes,  and  made  a 
convulsive  clutch  at  the  ivy  above  his  head.  Mechan- 
ically he  began  to  draw  his  body  up  the  cliff-like  surface, 
precisely  in  the  fashion  which  less  than  five  minutes  ago 
had  been  revealed  to  him  while  the  blood  ran  cold  in  his 
veins.  He  would  have  had  no  idea  of  the  manner  in 
which  to  attempt  the  climb  had  the  means  been  left  to  his 
own  ingenuity.  But  having  seen  Delia  gripping  with  her 
fingers  and  thrusting  at  the  crevices  with  her  feet,  by  force 


194  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

of  imitation,  he  found  himself  doing  the  same.  At  once 
he  found  his  toes  slipping  into  concealed  nooks,  capable 
of  giving  footholds,  and  his  hands  cleaving  to  roots  strong 
enough  to  support  his  weight.  It  was  then  borne  in  upon 
him  that  he  was  ascending  into  space  with  surprising 
rapidity,  and  miraculous  ease.  It  seemed  hardly  more 
difficult  than  climbing  a  ladder.  Like  many  another  act 
of  daring,  it  was  the  inception  that  made  the  supreme 
demand. 

His  first  steps  had  been  involuntary.  But  finding  him- 
self borne  onwards  and  upwards  so  lightly,  so  easily,  a 
rare  exhilaration  suddenly  took  hold  of  him.  For  the 
first  time  in  his  life  he  felt  the  sporting  instinct  bracing 
heart  and  nerves,  And  with  it  came  that  intrepid  in- 
souciance which  is  the  hallmark  and  the  birthright  of  the 
born  sportsman,  which  raises  him  to  a  higher  power  in 
the  crises  of  the  games  he  happens  to  be  playing:  the 
leader  of  cavalry  recovering  the  guns;  the  fox-hunter 
taking  his  own  line  in  a  quick  throng  across  a  big  country ; 
the  three-quarter  back  in  rugby  football  scoring  the  win- 
ning try  on  the  stroke  of  the  clock.  His  body  worked 
automatically;  his  whole  being  was  in  the  thrall  of  one 
idea.  A  pair  of  helpless  feet  were  in  a  niche  far  above 
his  head.     He  must  get  them  in  his  hands  or  die. 

Moving  upwards  through  space  he  was  conscious  of 
nothing  but  that.  Danger  and  fear  did  not  exist.  Flesh 
and  blood,  sunlight  and  green  fields  did  not  exist.  Time 
there  was  not,  nor  place.  At  last  he  was  up  to  her;  he 
was  touching  the  hem  of  her  skirt.  Releasing  one  hand 
from  the  ivy,  he  encircled  her  tightly  with  his  unencum- 
bered arm.  He  became  superhuman  as  he  did  so.  Sud- 
denly he  was  endowed  with  a  strength  far  beyond  his 
own.  Hoarsely  he  told  her  to  fold  her  arms  round  his 
throat.  She  obeyed  with  two  slender  throbbing  wrists 
as  cold  as  stone. 

How  they  got  down  alive  neither  of  them  could  ever 
say.  Afterwards  they  could  only  point  to  the  fact  that 
they  lived  to  tell  the  tale.  The  descent  was  simply  mirac- 
ulous, but  that  was  a  moment  when  the  young  man  pos- 


TWO  ON  A  TOWER  195 

sessed  miraculous  qualities.  He  carried  the  talisman  in 
his  spirit  that  performs  the  marvels  of  which  we  read. 
Those  who  have  this  faculty  of  submission  seldom  fail. 
He  was  surrendered  wholly  to  the  gods  of  his  enormous 
resolution,  and  step  by  step  they  brought  him  and  his 
burden  in  safety  to  the  coping  of  the  wall. 

"  I  am  all  right  now,  I  can  walk  now,"  said  Delia  faintly, 
the  moment  her  feet  touched  solid  bricks  and  mortar. 

He  allowed  her  to  slide  off  his  shoulders  on  to  it. 

Finding  herself  on  firm  ground  she  was  able  to  pull 
herself  together.  Soon  she  had  made  her  practised  way 
along  the  coping  to  the  far  end  of  the  wall  where  the 
descent  to  mother  earth  was  easiest.  He  laboured  after 
her  in  the  decidedly  less  dignified  and  less  comfortable 
fashion  in  which  he  had  crossed  it  before. 

When  the  green  earth  at  last  received  them  again.  Por- 
ter's first  act  was  to  prostrate  himself  at  full  length  and 
bury  his  face  in  the  grass.  For  about  a  minute  he  lay 
mute  and  panting,  and  then  began  to  shake  hysterically. 
Directly  afterwards  the  agitated  Delia  bending  over  him 
was  terrified  to  find  he  was  insensible.  She  pulled  him 
by  the  shoulder,  but  he  gave  no  sign.  She  called  his  name, 
but  he  made  no  answer.  She  knelt  down  at  his  side  and 
tried  to  raise  him  up,  but  putting  forth  all  her  strength 
she  could  not  move  him.  Great  was  her  alarm,  but  she 
managed  to  retain  her  presence  of  mind.  She  remem- 
bered that  a  clear  stream  of  water  ran  over  stones  at  the 
bottom  of  the  hill.  Running  down  to  it  as  fast  as  she 
could,  she  took  off  her  straw  hat  and  filled  the  crown  of 
it  with  water.  To  return  with  it  up  the  hill  was  not 
easy,  but  in  quite  a  short  time  she  was  back  at  his  side, 
without  having  spilled  a  drop  of  the  precious  liquor. 

To  her  immense  relief  she  discovered  him  to  be  sitting 
up  with  his  head  resting  against  the  wall.  His  face  was 
deadly,  and  it  was  curiously  distorted. 

He  gasped  at  the  sight  of  her  bearing  the  hat-full  of 
water  gravely  in  front  of  her.  His  lips  moved  in  thanks, 
but  he  was  unable  to  utter  them. 

She  gave  him  the  water  and  he  drank  greedily. 


196  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

He  drew  a  deep  breath.  He  was  shaking  all  over. 
His  face  was  so  convulsed  that  Delia  could  not  bear  to 
look  at  it. 

"  Can  you  ever  forgive  me  ?  "  she  said  at  last. 

She  was  dreadfully  frightened. 

Again  he  tried  to  speak,  but  could  only  make  a  strange 
noise  in  his  throat. 

"  You  will  forgive  me,"  said  Delia,  kneeling  beside  him. 

Some  instinct  urged  her  to  sprinkle  what  remained  of 
the  water  on  his  face. 

"  We  are  both  alive."    The  words  came  suddenly. 

"  Ye — es,"  said  Delia,  with  a  hysterical  sob  of  relief. 
"  Oh,  if  I  had  killed  you ! " 

"  And  you,"  he  sighed. 

''  I  wish  I  had  been  killed." 

Humiliation  was  biting  her  like  the  strokes  of  a  whip. 

"  I  knew  myself  to  be  despicable,"  she  said,  baring  her- 
self to  the  lash,  "  in  almost  all  things  compared  with  you. 
But  when  you  were  so  much  out  of  breath  coming  up  the 
hill,  I  felt  there  was  just  one  thing,  however  silly  and 
small  it  was,  in  which  I  should  not  have  to  acknowledge 
myself  beaten.  I  thought  I  would  like  you  to  see  there 
was  just  one  thing  I  could  do.  And — and  I  might  have 
killed  you." 

As  he  sat  there  with  his  deadly  pale  face,  the  knees  of 
his  trousers  cut,  and  blood  visible  on  the  palms  of  his 
hands,  he  felt  that  he  ought  not  to  let  her  off  lightly. 
But  how  was  it  possible  to  be  harsh  with  such  a  Spar- 
tan? 

"  Don't  let  us  talk  about  it,"  he  said.  "  Of  course,  I 
understand.  It  was  very  brave  of  you  to  do  it,  and  it  is 
still  braver  to  confess  why  you  did  it." 

"  I  shall  never  be  vainglorious  again." 

"  Then  so  much  less  the  woman  you,  and  that  would 
be  a  dreadful  pity." 

Amusement  was  softening  his  eyes  already. 

Delia  fought  against  her  tears. 

"  How  miserably  weak  I  am  I  "  she  cried.    "  How  you 


TWO  ON  A  TOWER  197 

must  despise  me!  I  wish  you  had  not  come  up  to  me 
at  all.     I  wish  you  had  let  me  fall  and  kill  myself !  " 

Her  sense  of  degradation  was  a  thing  very  hard  to 
endure. 

"  I  suppose  when  the  truth  comes  out  you  can  ride 
better  than  I,  although  you  told  me  you  had  never  mounted 
a  horse  in  your  life." 

"  Or  stand  on  my  head  better,  or  play  cricket  better," 
he  said,  laughing. 

"  No,  I  oughtn't  to  have  said  anything  so  stupid.  But  it 
is  because  you  make  me  feel  so  hopeless.  You  know  I 
began  by  hating  you ;  and  I  am  afraid  I  shall  end  by  hat- 
ing you.    You  make  me  feel  so  miserable." 

Nothing  seemed  able  to  relieve  her  rather  cruel  distress. 
No  words  from  her  friend,  however  gentle,  were  able  to 
soften  the  edge  of  her  humiliation.  Why  she  should  be 
suffering  so  acutely  now  the  terrible  episode  was  past  he 
did  not  know.  Far  was  he  from  suspecting  that  his  own 
too-potent  personality  was  the  cause. 

Realizing  at  last  that  the  pain  she  suffered  was  far  be- 
yond his  power  of  healing,  he  rose  from  the  turf  and 
proposed  a  return  to  the  house.  Hardly  a  word  passed 
between  them  on  the  way  back.  Her  distress  seemed  to 
give  him  a  still  finer  sense  of  her  delicacy.  Such  a 
fragility  could  easily  bruise.  He  found  himself  specu- 
lating on  her  fate  as  he  walked  beside  her.  The  spectre 
of  the  average  fox-hunting  pheasant-shooter  rose  before 
his  eyes.  Was  she  the  predestined  victim  of  some  rough- 
and-ready,  conventional-minded  savage?  Poor  little  girl, 
some  honest  rogue  would  see  to  it  that  she  bled! 

He  left  her  in  the  avenue.  She  stood  wistfully  to  watch 
his  insignificant  figure  pass  out  of  sight  among  the  trees. 
She  then  turned  her  steps  towards  a  thicket  which  lay 
beyond  a  lawn  at  the  back  of  the  house.  Penetrating  to 
the  heart  of  it  she  flung  herself  down  beneath  a  great  tree, 
burying  her  face  in  fern,  and  wept  and  wept  until  at  last 
she  could  weep  no  more. 


CHAPTER  XX 

PREPARATIONS   FOR   COMEDY 

ALL  this  time  Mrs.  Broke  was  gathering  her  forces  for 
what  lay  before  her.  She  was  said  to  rejoice  in  a 
dual  endowment  of  courage  and  wisdom,  but  the  calam- 
ity that  had  come  upon  her  was  a  tax  upon  them  both. 
It  is  a  pity  that  these  qualities  in  conjunction  are  not  more 
satisfying,  but  the  presence  of  the  one  too  often  implies 
the  necessity  for  the  other. 

She  recognized  acutely  the  fatal  nature  of  her  son's  act. 
She  believed  that  as  a  family  they  lived  in  an  hour  when 
every  ounce  of  social  prestige  they  could  scrape  together 
must  he  used  to  keep  their  heads  above  the  stream.  They 
had  enemies.  There  would  be  no  lack  of  volunteers  for 
the  agreeable  duty  of  performing  the  happy  dispatch. 
There  were  people  who  would  only  be  too  willing  to  un- 
dertake the  humane  office  of  inserting  a  piece  of  lead  in 
their  shoes,  so  that  once  in  the  water  there  might  be  no 
doubt  whatever  about  their  going  down  to  "  Davy  Jones." 
You  cannot  be  powerful  and  exclusive,  and  have  a  repu- 
tation for  arrogance  without  having  a  few  friends  of  this 
kind.     Wherever  there  is  a  dying  lion  the  jackals  gather. 

However,  in  the  stoicism  of  her  temper  she  did  not 
flinch  so  much  as  another  might  have  done  from  the 
coup  de  grace  of  the  outside  world.  She  valued  power 
less  as  a  mere  possession  than  for  what  it  could  do.  The 
gravest  difficulties,  when  all  was  said,  arose  in  her  own 
house.  Turning  the  matter  over  in  her  mind  during  the 
watches  of  the  night,  she  had  to  confess,  even  with  full 
allowance  for  all  the  inestimable  advantages  her  wisdom 
conferred  upon  her,  that  there  was  one  point  in  which 
she  went  in  terror  of  the  man  whose  name  she  bore. 

She  had  made  a  comprehensive  and  exhaustive  study^ 

198 


PREPARATIONS  FOR  COMEDY  199 

of  that  simple  feudal  gentleman.  In  any  given  situation 
she  was  tolerably  sure  of  how  he  would  act.  She  had 
made  an  inventory  of  his  character  and  ideas.  But  there 
were  two  clauses  in  it  which  foreshadowed  the  gravity 
of  the  issue  at  present  besetting  him.  Sense  of  humour 
nil;  Pride,  the  algebraic  figure  X.  This  eternal  unknown 
quantity  baffled  her.  That  apart  he  stood  for  a  lusty, 
beef-eating,  beer-drinking  British  farmer;  an  animal  sur- 
prisingly amenable,  provided  you  did  not  keep  him  wait- 
ing for  his  meals.  Up  to  a  point  he  was  about  as  complex 
as  a  horse;  up  to  a  point  his  emotional  system  could  be 
tabulated  with  precision  and  nicety.  But  this  survival 
of  other  and  darker  ages  in  him  was  a  different  matter. 
Its  depths  were  unplumbed.  They  were  a  little  terrible, 
a  little  legendary.  And  they  derived  a  further  reputa- 
tion for  profundity  owing  to  their  limpidity  of  surface. 

Sleeping  and  awake  the  problem  gave  her  no  peace. 
The  longer  she  put  off  the  evil  hour  the  more  difficult  it 
grew.  Yet  it  was  imperative  that  there  should  be  no 
delay,  lest  he  find  out  by  other  means.  It  was  unlike  her 
to  shirk  an  ordeal,  but  she  would  go  to  bed  with  the  de- 
termination to  break  the  news  the  first  thing  in  the  morn- 
ing; she  would  rise  with  the  resolution  to  do  so  imme- 
diately after  luncheon;  she  would  dress  for  dinner  and 
vow  to  speak  of  it  the  last  thing  before  retiring.  She 
began  to  grow  a  little  despicable  in  her  own  eyes.  Such 
weakness  was  no  part  of  her  character. 

Maud  Wayling  also  was  a  person  whom  it  was  vital  to 
consider,  common  decency  forbade  delay.  In  her  case 
the  task  was  less  difficult,  although  she  wanted  very  much 
to  spare  unnecessary  pain.  To  this  end  she  waited  until 
Alice  and  her  aunt  had  been  quietly  installed  in  the  small 
cottage  on  the  hill. 

She  took  an  early  opportunity  of  saying: 

"  Two  very  dear  people  in  whom  I  am  interested  are 
coming  to  live  in  the  old  empty  cottage  on  the  hill.  There 
has  been  no  one  in  it,  Edmund,  since  poor  old  Duffin  died. 
It  might  as  well  be  occupied  as  lie  idle  and  rot." 

When  the  rapturously  happy  women  from  the  purlieus 


200  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

of  North  London  had  been  settled  at  last  in  their  new 
home,  Mrs.  Broke  went  one  morning  to  see  them.  She 
took  Maud  Wayling  with  her.  She  felt  that  if  the  girl 
had  the  opportunity  of  seeing  aunt  and  niece  with  per- 
fectly disinterested  eyes,  the  impression  she  would  gain 
might  soften  the  blow  they  were  condemned  to  deal. 

"  What  did  you  think  of  those  dear  things,  my  dear 
Maud  ?  "  said  Mrs.  Broke  upon  their  return.  "  They  are 
really  rather  moving,  are  they  not  ?  " 

"  They  are  indeed,"  said  the  girl,  with  a  little  more 
animation  in  her  eyes  than  was  usual.  **  I  think  Alice  is 
the  fairest,  sweetest  creature  I  have  ever  seen." 

''And  the  old  aunt?" 

"  The  old  aunt  is  a  dear.  That  sweet,  old-fashioned 
curtsey!  And  the  way  her  voice  shook  when  she  gave 
you  the  handful  of  flowers  she  had  picked  out  of  the  gar- 
den! I  would  like  to  steal  half  of  them  if  I  may.  And 
that  beautiful  haunted  old  face  that  seems  almost  fright- 
ened to  find  itself  so  happy ! " 

"  Yes,  they  are  rather  wonderful.  How  one  envies  their 
simplicity,"  Mrs.  Broke  sighed. 

"  What  would  one  not  give  to  have  it !  "  said  the  girl. 

"  What,  indeed !  The  more  one  sees  of  life  the  more 
one  realizes  that  it  is  arranged  upon  a  basis  of  compen- 
sations." 

"  Yes,"  said  the  girl,  "  it  must  be  so." 

"  I  took  you  to  see  them  because  there  is  a  rather  re- 
markable story  I  want  to  tell  you.  It  involves  us  both. 
What  you  will  suffer  I  shall  suffer  also."  She  took  the 
girl's  hand.     "  I  only  pray  that  we  spare  each  other." 

The  dramatic  change  in  the  voice  of  the  elder  woman 
startled  the  girl.  Every  word  was  charged  with  mean- 
ing. Yet  she  could  not  conceive  how  the  two  poor  women 
at  the  cottage  should  have  a  tragic  bearing  on  her  life. 
Mrs.  Broke  did  not  allow  her  to  remain  long  in  perplex- 
ity.    Very  briefly  she  told  the  story. 

"  In  the  name  of  the  fair  child  whom  we  have  seen  this 
morning,"  she  said,  with  both  the  girl's  hands  in  her  own, 
"  I  ask  you  to  pardon  him." 


PREPARATIONS  FOR  COMEDY  201 

'There  is  nothing  for  me  to  forgive."  The  level  voice 
showed  not  a  trace  of  passion.  "  He  has  never  cared  for 
me.     I  have  come  to  feel  that." 

"  Yes,  but  you,  my  dear !  " 

Mrs.  Broke  held  the  cold  fingers  firmer.  With  a  sud- 
den movement  the  girl  drew  them  away  and  clasped  them 
against  her  heart.     Her  face  had  grown  wan. 

"  The  last  time  we  met,"  she  said,  "  I  could  see  he 
meant  to  get  free.  And  if  I  had  not  been  so  selfish  I 
should  have  made  it  easier  for  him.  But  I  was  too  weak. 
I  don't  think  I  am  capable  of  self-sacrifice.  That  is  the 
worst  of  living  in  a  gilded  cage.  Oh,  how  weary,  how 
weary  I  am  of  my  life ! "  The  words  were  wrung  very 
slowly  out  of  the  passionless  lips.  "  I  am  always  think- 
ing of  myself.  I  am  doing  so  now,  when,  dear  Mrs.  Broke, 
I  ought  to  be  thinking  of  you.  After  all,  it  falls  so  very 
much  harder  on  you.  I  do  feel  for  you,  dear  Mrs.  Broke. 
How  wonderful  you  are ! " 

The  elder  woman  took  her  in  her  arms  very  tenderly. 

"  I,  at  least,  understand  .  .  .  you  poor  ghild,"  she  said. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

IN   WHICH   THE  FIRST   COMEDIAN    MAKES   HIS   BOW    BEFORE 
AN    APPRECIATIVE    AUDIENCE 

IN  the  course  of  that  afternoon  Mrs.  Broke  took  the 
greater  plunge  under  the  spur  of  necessity.  She  could 
no  longer  afford  to  run  the  risk  of  the  secret  leaking  out. 
She  knew  Broke  too  well  to  continue  to  incur  so  great 
a  danger.  She  must  away  with  cowardice  lest  she  became 
implicated  in  the  guilt  of  her  son's  act. 

Broke  entered  the  library  wearily,  under  protest,  to  en- 
gage, as  he  believed,  in  a  futile  discussion  of  their  financial 
affairs. 

"  Money,  money,  money ! "  he  said,  sinking,  as  was  his 
wont  during  these  periods  of  boredom,  into  his  customary 
chair  at  the  side  of  the  fire. 

"  Something  new,"  said  his  wife,  "  and  something 
worse."  Her  brevity  was  electrical.  He  sat  up  suddenly, 
galvanized  by  her  tone. 

"  I — ah,  can  hardly  conceive  anything  worse  than  our 
need  of  money,  our  eternal  attempts  to  make  bricks  with- 
out straw." 

"  Try,  Edmund." 

"  That  fellow  has  not  been  playing  tricks  ?  " 

"  Your  guess  is  excellent." 

"  They  have  not — ah,  fallen  out  ?  " 

"  No ;  but  Billy  has  married  somebody  else." 

Broke's  "  What !  "  rang  through  the  room  like  the  firing 
of  a  shot. 

Her  brevity  was  calculated.  She  had  carefully  thought 
out  beforehand  the  best  way  in  which  to  tell  him.  Ex- 
pedience was  in  the  woof  of  that  sagacious  mind.  She 
had  come  to  see  that  in  this  case  any  attempt  to  sugar  the 

202 


THE  FIRST  COMEDIAN  MAKES  HIS  BOW     203 

bitter  pill  would  defeat  its  purpose.  These  bluntly  hon- 
est characters  demand  a  perpetual  exhibition  of  that  qual- 
ity in  others. 

To  Broke's  shout  of  amazement  his  wife  opposed  a 
stoical  calmness. 

"  Do  you  know  what  you  are  saying,  woman  ?  " 

"  Edmund,"  she  said,  "  you  may  find  it  just  the  least  bit 
premature  to  trumpet  your  astonishment  in  this  key.  Be- 
cause you  have  yet  to  hear  the  worst.  Billy  is  not  only 
married ;  he  is  married  to  a  girl  out  of  Perkin  and  War- 
beck's  shop  in  Bond  Street." 

Broke  rose  from  his  chair.  He  proceeded  to  stagger 
up  and  down  the  large  room  with  both  hands  pressed 
against  the  sides  of  his  head. 

He  made  strange  noises  at  intervals. 

His  wife  did  not  speak  a  word  until  this  paroxysm  was 
over.  It  is  useless  to  ask  a  man  to  be  calm  the  moment  a 
nerve  has  been  torn  out  by  the  roots.  She  stood  watch- 
ing him  with  the  inscrutable  countenance  of  Juno  regard- 
ing the  frenzies  of  Jupiter. 

"  Can  you  bear  details,  Edmund  ?  "  she  said  at  last. 

"  I  don't  know,"  he  said  in  a  rather  feeble  voice. 

In  a  few  succinct  phrases,  she  gave  the  facts  in  so  far 
as  she  was  acquainted  with  them.  She  concluded  her 
recital  in  these  words : 

"  Edmund,  that  is  the  outline  of  the  affair  as  it  exists. 
In  whatever  light  one  looks  at  the  matter  it  can  only 
mean  ruin.  Let  us  keep  that  fact  ever  in  mind.  But 
acting  on  a  true  conception  of  the  position,  I  would  ask 
you  to  be  wise  as  well  as  just." 

He  stopped  a  moment  in  his  pacing  of  the  room,  but  his 
reply  was  inaudible. 

"  I  ask  you,  Edmund,  to  give  me  your  help.  We  can- 
not undo  that  which  is  done,  but  it  may  be  given  to  us  to 
make  less  the  consequences  of  this  disaster.  I  am  sure 
we  shall  best  serve  the  interests  of  all  concerned  by  being 
just.  Suffer  as  we  may,  we  must  not  fail  in  our  first 
duty,  and  that  is  to  the  girl  he  has  married." 

She  breathed  heavily  as  she  spoke  these  words.     They 


204  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

were  not  easy  to  utter.  Stoical  she  might  be,  but  they 
galled  her  cruelly. 

A  look  of  dire  perplexity  clouded  Broke's  face. 

"  I  don't  understand,"  he  said  dully. 

In  his  present  state  of  mental  chaos  she  saw  it  would  be 
futile  to  proceed.  She  fell  back  upon  silence,  therefore. 
But  the  self-possession  with  which  she  regarded  him  was 
tinged  with  pity.  He  was  still  walking  up  and  down  the 
room  in  his  bewildered  and  rather  sorry  manner.  He  kept 
clutching  at  his  head,  as  though  he  sought  to  pluck  out  a 
thing  that  was  ploughing  his  brain  in  furrows.  It  was  as 
though  he  sought  to  lift  out  bodily  that  which  had  over- 
thrown his  mind,  and  hold  it  up  before  his  eyes  in  order 
that  he  might  grasp  it  more  clearly.  Words  were  at  last 
torn  from  him  in  slow  payments. 

"  I  am  only — ah — just  making  myself — ah — begin  to 
realize  the  meaning  of  what  you  say.  At  first  it  sounds 
so  unnatural  that  it  rather  knocks  you  over.  Do  you 
think  the  fellow  is  mad?" 

"  In  a  sense  I  do ;  but  it  is  not  the  sort  of  madness  one 
could  prove  before  a  jury." 

"  It  is  such  a  cruel  thing  to  do  as  far  as  we  are  con- 
cerned.    He  has  not  thought  of  us  at  all." 

"  Do  not  let  us  blame  him  altogether  for  that,"  said  the 
mother  of  his  son.  "  We  ourselves  are  also  a  little 
to  blame  there.  From  the  first,  I  am  afraid,  he  has  al- 
ways been  given  too  free  a  hand." 

"  Yes,  perhaps  you  are  right." 

"  Young  men  placed  as  he  has  been  have  such  oppor- 
tunities for  making  a  mess  of  their  lives.  It  has  been  our 
poor  boy's  misfortune  to  be  born  to  a  state  of  things  in 
which  it  is  only  too  easy  to  pander  to  the  best  of  one's 
whims.  I  am  afraid  he  belongs  to  a  very  self-indulgent 
class." 

"  I  deny  that,"  said  the  hardened  aristocrat  vehemently. 

Perhaps  she  had  spoken  with  his  denial  in  view.  Any 
slight  diversion  from  the  matter  that  was  racking  him  to 
pieces  would  be  an  act  of  mercy. 

"  You  may  deny  it,  Edmund,  but  I  hardly  think  you 


THE  FIRST  COMEDIAN  MAKES  HIS  BOW     205 

will  be  able  to  disprove  it.  One  shudders  to  think  of  the 
host  of  impartial  witnesses  that  could  be  brought  in  evi- 
dence against  us." 

"  There  are  no  impartial  witnesses  in  our  case.  Those 
who  are  not  on  our  level  would  always  pull  us  down." 

"Why?" 

"  Human  nature,  I  suppose.  If  they  can't  come  up  to 
us  we've  got  to  come  down  to  them." 

His  wife,  torn  as  she  was,  could  not  forbear  to  smile  a 
little  at  the  measured  tones  of  this  arrogance. 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  trailing  her  coat  in  order  that  he 
might  step  on  it,  *'  I  am  afraid  democracy  owes  us  a 
grudge." 

"For  what?" 

"  Because  there  is  hardly  a  lust,  hardly  a  whim  which 
place  and  power  have  enabled  us  to  gratify,  that  we  have 
scrupled  to  gratify  at  its  expense.  Don't  we  all  sub- 
scribe to  the  dogma  that  the  world  is  to  us  and  our  kin? 
Do  we  ever  hesitate  to  strain  our  privileges  to  gain  our 
ends?  All  is  well,  provided  we  do  not  defile  the  sources 
whence  we  obtain  our  purple  and  fine  linen.  Our  arro- 
gance, our  laissez-faire,  our  complete  insensibility  to  any 
interests  outside  our  own  are  bound  to  recoil  upon  us  in 
the  end." 

"  I  have  not  the  patience  to  listen,"  said  Broke  ve- 
hemently. "  You  might  be  one  of  those  orators  in  Hyde 
Park.  If  we  are  so  bad  as  that,  how  have  we  got  our 
position  and  why  have  we  kept  it  for  so  long  ?  " 

"  We  have  never  found  it  very  easy  to  keep ;  and  per- 
haps you  will  admit  we  are  not  finding  it  easy  now.  And 
one  suspects  that  the  means  by  which  it  came  to  us  were 
not  over  nice." 

"Why— ah— this  Radical  Socialist  talk?" 

"  Perhaps  one's  eyes  have  been  unsealed  a  little  of  late. 
If  you,  Edmund,  could  have  come  with  me  to  the  noisome 
place  in  the  north  of  London  in  which  these  women  have 
lived  their  lives ;  if  you  could  have  seen  the  squalor,  dis- 
ease, and  hardship  which  surrounded  them,  it  might  have 
unsealed  your  eyes  too." 


2o6  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

Broke  made  a  gesture  of  impatience.  But  his  wife 
ignored  il  studiously. 

"  Moreover,  Edmund,  I  say  this.  I  am  not  sure  that 
we  do  not  deserve  to  be  ruined.  I  am  not  sure  that  all 
persons  such  as  we  have  proved  ourselves  to  be  ought  not 
to  go  to  the  wall.  What  have  we  done  to  justify  our  exist- 
ence? We  may  on  occasion  have  strenuously  opposed 
projects  to  make  the  lot  of  others  easier,  but  we  do  not 
appear  to  have  gone  beyond  that.  And  when  one  comes 
to  think  over  what  has  happened  to  us,  one  can  almost  see 
it  as  an  act  of  Nemesis." 

Broke  flung  up  his  head. 

"  You — ah — mean  to  say  he  has  ruined  us  because  of — 
ah — such  fantastical  notions  as  these?" 

"  I  repeat,  Edmund,  we  may  deserve  to  be  ruined." 

"  Good  God,  woman,  this  is  cant,  Radical  cant !  You — 
ah — should  go  into  Parliament  as  the — ah — representative 
of  labour." 

He  had  man's  contempt  for  the  polemical  faculty  of 
woman.  She  could  be  allowed  a  free  hand  to  deal  with 
the  minutiae  of  daily  life ;  he  could  even  admit  that  nature 
had  formed  her  to  deal  with  things  of  that  sort,  for  were 
they  not  in  harmony  with  the  feminine  order  of  mind? 
But  on  really  large  affairs,  on  political  questions,  on  ques- 
tions touching  authority  and  tradition,  she  must  not  be 
permitted  to  hold  an  opinion.  No  woman,  however  wise, 
could  be  trusted  there.  If  any  better  illustration  of  that 
truth  could  be  furnished  than  his  wife's  attitude  towards 
the  marriage  of  his  son,  and  her  advocacy  of  Socialism 
in  order  to  justify  it,  he  should  be  grateful  to  be  shown  it. 

"  This  is  what  you  women  do,"  he  said.  "  You  find  a 
grain  of  something  that  you — ah — persuade  yourselves  is 
truth,  and  you  make  a  peck  of  nonsense  out  of  it.  Please 
let  us  have  no  more  of  it ! " 

Mrs.  Broke  let  him  have  no  more.  She  was  not  sure 
that  she  had  spoken  with  any  depth  of  conviction.  There 
had  been  an  ulterior  motive  underlying  her  argument, 
which  in  a  measure  might  be  said  to  be  fulfilled.  His 
mind  had  been  mercifully  diverted  from  the  calamity  as- 


THE  FIRST  COMEDIAN  MAKES  HIS  BOW     207 

sailing  it.  And  if  his  anger  could  he  divorced  for  the 
time  being  from  the  subject  that  had  called  it  forth,  there 
was  the  hope,  perhaps  too  slender  to  be  named,  that  the 
first  furious  force  of  it  might  pass. 

By  nature,  however,  he  was  a  man  with  a  great  power 
of  resentment.  In  the  metaphor  of  his  brother-in-law, 
"  he  was  a  stayer."  He  could  brood  upon  a  private 
wrong.  And  by  taking  thought  his  sense  of  outrage  was 
not  likely  to  grow  less.  When  one  of  his  primary  ideas 
was  touched  he  was  indeed  formidable.  Reason  could  not 
reach  him  then.  And  if  it  seemed  necessary  to  arm  his 
heart  against  the  first  object  of  its  affection,  he  was  the 
man  for  the  deed.  He  could  be  very  hard,  very  pitiless 
at  the  dictation  of  justice. 

At  dinner  that  evening  the  first  evidence  occurred  of 
this  drastic  temper.  The  girls  were  talking  across  the 
table  among  themselves,  and  the  name  of  their  brother, 
which  was  oftener  on  their  lips  perhaps  than  any  other, 
was  being  freely  interchanged. 

"  Joan,"  said  their  father  in  a  tone  that  was  to  dwell  in 
their  ears  evermore,  "  oblige  me  by  never  mentioning  that 
name  again  when  I  am  present." 

The  startled  creatures  shot  bewildered  glances  at  one 
another,  and  then  at  their  mother.  There  was  the  blank- 
est stupefaction  in  their  faces;  but  their  mother  met  it 
with  the  inscrutability  that  was  hers  always.  As  usual, 
she  was  a  closed  book,  of  which  not  a  line  could  be  read. 
But  the  blow  had  been  delivered  by  one  who  was  a  com- 
rade; by  one  whose  natural  accessibility  rendered  it  the 
more  tragic.  He  had  never  used  such  a  tone  to  them 
before.  It  was  terrible.  It  must  have  hurt  them  more 
than  he  knew;  a  single  word  from  him  had  the  power  to 
lacerate.  Even  as  it  was  he  saw  their  startled,  scarlet 
faces,  and  his  tenderness  for  them  came  to  their  aid. 

"  Something  has  happened,"  he  said  less  harshly.  "  You 
— ah — must  get  your  mother  to  explain  it." 

Again  they  turned  covert  glances  to  their  mother,  but 
her  face  was  a  mask. 

Afterwards,  in  privacy,  husband  and  wife  sat  late  into 


2o8  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

the  night.  Broke,  with  a  premeditation  unusual  in  him, 
waited  until  he  had  dined  before  he  made  the  attempt  to 
come  to  grips  with  the  matter.  He  wanted  to  grapple  with 
the  thing  squarely,  to  look  all  round  it  before  he  acted ;  and 
when  act  he  did  he  felt  it  must  not  be  said  that  he  was 
moved  to  do  so  in  a  moment  of  passion  or  imperfect  self- 
control. 

Upon  taking  thought  he  sat  down  after  dinner  and 
composed  a  letter.  It  was  written  with  a  deliberation  of 
spirit  that  sealed  his  own  doom  as  well  as  that  of  his  son. 
It  was  a  bitter  and  unworthy  production,  but  mercifully 
short.  There  was  not  a  sentence  in  it  that  a  father  is  not 
entitled  to  use;  not  a  word  went  beyond  the  truth  or  in- 
fringed the  laws  of  politeness,  but  the  tone  was  vigour 
without  warmth,  brutality  without  vehemence.  The  whole 
performance  was  absolutely  frigid  and  unemotional,  yet 
the  writer's  sense  of  outrage  was  cloaked  less  effectually 
than  he  thought. 

In  effect  Broke  informed  his  son  that,  in  consideration 
of  his  recent  act,  he  was  his  son  no  more  except  in  name. 
He  regretted  it  was  not  in  his  power  to  denude  him  of 
that  sole  identification  of  what  he  had  been  formerly. 
Had  it  been  possible,  he  would  have  done  so,  since  Billy 
had  been  at  such  pains  to  prove  his  unfitness  for  the 
estate  to  which  it  had  pleased  providence  to  call  him. 

Broke  proceeded  to  issue  a  decree  of  banishment. 
Billy's  act  had  cut  him  off  from  his  kind.  Not  again  was 
he  to  set  foot  in  that  house ;  his  name  was  not  to  be  spoken 
in  it ;  and  on  the  understanding  that  he  did  not  attempt  the 
contamination  of  his  sisters,  nor  prejudice  his  family  by 
appearances  in  the  neighbourhood,  he  was  to  receive  two 
hundred  pounds  a  year.  Sacrifices  had  formerly  been 
made  to  maintain  him  in  a  state  of  decency ;  since  he  had 
now  ceased  to  have  a  regard  for  decency  they  would  no 
longer  be  made. 

Mrs.  Broke  read  this  unfortunate  production  with  a 
slight  flush  in  her  face,  and  a  very  odd  expression  in  her 
eyes.  When  she  had  finished  she  stood  a  moment  irreso- 
lutely looking  at  her  husband. 


THE  FIRST  COMEDIAN  MAKES  HIS  BOW     209 

"  Fortunately,  you  cannot  send  it  to-night.  It  is  well 
that  you  will  be  able  to  sleep  upon  it." 

"  I  don't  propose  to  give  it  another  thought." 

"  Not  to  do  so  will  be  very  injudicious." 

"  I  cannot  agree  with  you.  It  quite  expresses  what  I 
wish  to  say." 

"  But  it  is  irrevocable." 

"  It  is  intended  to  be." 

She  laid  her  hand  on  his  arm. 

"You  cannot  mean  that,"  she  said,  with  a  frightened 
look  in  her  eyes.  "  I  do  not  think  you  realize  what  it 
means." 

Broke  stood  before  her  in  silence. 

"  You  cannot  realize  how  wrong,  how  inhuman  it  is ! " 

"  It  may  or  it  may  not  be  as  you  say,  but  I  fancy  as  far 
as  our  peace  of  mind  is  concerned,  we  shall  do  well  to  con- 
sider the  matter  closed  once  and  for  all.  We  close  it  now 
with  your  permission." 

"  I  do  not  give  it,  I  cannot  give  it ! "  said  the  mother  a 
little  wildly. 

Broke  sealed  the  letter  without  making  a  reply.  His 
wife  took  him  by  the  arm. 

"  I  feel  sure  you  do  not  appreciate  all  that  is  involved," 
she  said,  turning  her  scared  face  up  to  him.  "  He  is  all 
you  have." 

"  Had  I  another  I  would  not  contribute  a  farthing  to  his 
maintenance." 

The  mother  flushed. 

"  You  speak  like  a  savage,"  she  said. 

The  mask  of  inscrutability  was  in  danger  of  falling 
from  her. 

"  You  cannot  do  it,  Edmund,"  she  said  in  a  queer,  rather 
thin  voice.     "  It  will  cost  too  much." 

Broke  presented  a  stony  disregard.  His  gesture,  or 
rather  his  absence  of  gesture,  seemed  to  suggest  that  he 
was  a  little  tired  already.  Exhibitions  of  emotion  and 
that  kind  of  neurotic  display  are  apt  soon  to  become 
fatiguing. 

"  Edmund,  I  beseech  you  to  listen  " — there  was  a  curi- 


2IO  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

ous  note  in  that  thin  voice — "  when  all  is  said  he  is  a 
mere  boy.     He  did  not  realize  it  all." 

"  That  is  not  true."  His  leisurely  directness  was  like  a 
blow  in  the  face.  "  He  knew  what  he  did,  but  he  did  not 
care.  If  he  did  not  know  what  he  did,  why  did  he  not 
take  daylight  to  it,  like  an  honest  man  ?  " 

The  mother  permitted  herself  a  palpable  untruth. 

"  He  was  thinking  of  poor  Maud,"  she  said,  flushing 
again  and  turning  away  her  face.  ''  He  would  have  done 
it  openly  had  not  their  engagement  been  announced.  I 
blame  myself  for  that.  He  wanted  to  spare  her.  It  is  to 
his  credit." 

Having  suppressed  a  yawn,  Broke  forced  himself  to  take 
a  renewed  interest  in  the  unprofitable  discussion.  He 
opened  his  eyes  very  wide,  and  his  slow  and  rather  cruel 
smile  sank  into  the  woman  before  him. 

"  I — ah — don't  believe  you,"  he  said.  "  I — ah — don't 
believe  any  of  you  women.  You  stick  at  nothing  at  a 
pinch.  You  are  trying  to  make  the  best  peace  you  can, 
and  this  is  how  you  do  it." 

"  And  if  it  is,"  said  his  wife,  a  little  stung. 

"  Now  suppose  I  give  you  a  word  of  advice.  Don't 
interfere.  You  can't  understand.  You  will  be  wise  to 
close  the  matter  here  and  now." 

It  could  not  be  said  of  Mrs.  Broke  that  she  was  deficient 
in  spirit.  A  grim  light  burnt  in  her  eyes.  It  generally 
portended  mischief,  as  her  daughters  were  so  well  aware. 

"  When  will  you  understand,  Edmund,"  she  said,  with 
a  calmness  that  was  memorable,  "  that  you  are  not  a 
feudal  baron  living  in  the  twelfth  century.  You  must 
please  forget  your  lance  and  your  pole-axe,  and  remember 
this  is  a  civilized  age." 

She  was  beginning  to  feel  that  she  was  in  imminent  dan- 
ger of  losing  her  temper.  The  tactician  was  merged  al- 
ready in  the  woman  and  the  mother.  But  instinct  told 
her  that  to  lose  her  temper  would  mean  total  defeat.  To 
lead  Broke  was  possible  under  certain  conditions,  but  any 
attempt  at  force  must  end  in  disaster. 

Once  again  she  had  to  make  the  admission  that  he  was  a 


THE  FIRST  COMEDIAN  MAKES  HIS  BOW     211 

dreadful  creature  when  his  blood  was  up.  The  survival 
of  the  savage  in  him  made  it  no  woman's  work  to  tackle 
him.  She  might  make  tacit  appeals  to  the  sense  of  chiv- 
alry, but  they  are  likely  to  have  little  weight  with  such 
primitive  natures  when  their  blood  is  up.  She  might  be 
incomparable  in  finesse;  accomplished  in  thrust  and  parry 
work;  but  these  medievalists  had  a  tendency  to  ride  into 
battle  swinging  weapons  more  portentous  than  the  rapier. 

She  was  conscious  of  a  dull  anguish  rising  like  a  flood 
in  her  heart.  To  her  whose  life  had  been  a  long  victory 
over  emotion,  such  a  sense  of  its  power  filled  her  with 
horror.  If  she  lost  her  self-control  now  her  son  was 
doomed ;  yet  never  had  it  been  so  hard  to  keep. 

"  You  don't  understand,"  was  Broke's  reply  to  the  most 
piercing  of  her  appeals.  "  You  can't  be  made  to  under- 
stand. I — ah — daresay  it  is  because  you  are  his  mother. 
Mind  I — ah — don't  blame  you.  I — ah — presume  there  is 
something  wrong-headed  and  irrational  in  being  a  mother. 
Take  my  advice  and  dismiss  the  subject." 

"  I  cannot ;  believe  me,  Edmund,  I  cannot." 

Her  voice  failed  suddenly.  Almost  for  the  first  time  in 
their  life  together  Broke  saw  a  tear.  It  was  not  easy 
for  her  to  weep.  Tears  had  to  be  distilled  drop  by  drop 
out  of  that  unyielding  spirit.  Broke  was  shocked.  He 
had  a  reverential  tenderness  for  her,  deep  down.  She 
was  very  dear  to  him;  she  was  a  part  of  himself.  He 
took  her  cold  hand. 

"  You  must  bear  up,  old  girl,"  he  said.  "  I  know  it  is 
a  facer  for  you,  but  you — ah — must  try  to  keep  a  stiff 
upper  lip.  You  don't  understand,  and  it  is  no  good  try- 
ing to  make  you.  But  it  is  a  facer  for  me  too — a  devil 
of  a  facer.     I  hope — ah — you  will  do  me  that  justice." 

"  I  do,  I  do,"  said  his  wife.  "  If  I  did  not  I  would  not 
bore  you  like  this.  But  when  you  prepare  to  strike  off 
your  left  hand  to  avenge  the  misdeeds  of  your  right,  I 
cannot  stand  by  and  see  the  deed  done." 

"  It  is  the  sign  of  our  decadence.  We  don't  meet  things 
nowadays.     I  am  no  believer  in  half  measures." 

Despair  was  slowly  overcoming  Mrs.  Broke.     Appeals 


212  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

to  Broke's  humanity,  his  paternal  instinct,  his  sense  of 
justice  were  vain.  There  was  nothing  to  be  done.  He 
had  got  his  back  against  the  wall  of  his  unreason,  and 
nothing — nothing  could  induce  him  to  budge.  It  made 
him  bleed  to  see  his  wife  suffer,  for  at  heart  there  was 
none  more  chivalrous.  But  he  was  of  that  unfortunate 
constitution  which  finds  in  its  own  distress  a  justifica- 
tion for  the  indulgence  of  its  prejudice.  Had  he  loved 
his  son  less  and  his  wife  less  there  would  have  been  a 
better  chance  for  all.  The  pain  he  suffered  removed  the 
last  doubt  as  to  whether  he  was  acting  worthily. 

"  I  suffer  too,"  he  said ;  and  in  that  statement  he  felt 
the  guarantee  of  a  lofty  disinterestedness. 

Mrs.  Broke  had  one  quality,  however,  that  her  country- 
men like  to  think  was  attributed  to  them  by  the  first 
Napoleon.  She  did  not  know  when  to  give  in.  Strand 
by  strand  she  felt  the  rope  of  unreason  coiling  around 
her.  Hand  and  foot  it  was  fettering  her.  It  was  like  a 
great  serpent  pressing  out  her  life.  She  could  no  longer 
raise  a  finger  to  help  her  son.  Broke  had  sealed  the  let- 
ter and  the  light  of  reason  was  not  in  him.  Desperation 
came  upon  her.  The  stay  of  her  life  had  been  her 
reticence.  It  had  been  a  rare  source  of  strength  in  her 
combats  with  the  world.  It  would  be  so  again;  but  in 
this,  the  sharpest  pass  to  which  her  life  had  yet  been 
brought,  it  could  not  help  her  at  all.  That  being  the  case, 
she  would  do  without  it.  She  would  cast  off  its  fetters 
and  see  if  untrammelled  nature  could  avail. 

"  Edmund,"  she  said,  "  it  may  sound  a  little  theatrical 
for  you  and  me  to  refer  to  the  number  of  years  we  have 
pulled  together,  but  you  force  me  to  remind  you  that,  long 
as  we  have  done  so,  this  is  the  first  occasion  I  have  asked 
for  anything  important.  On  that  ground  I  ask  you  not 
to  send  that  letter." 

Such  words  seemed  to  drive  a  tremor  through  Broke's 
unexpressive  face.     She  marked  it  hungrily. 

"  I  have  fought  your  battles,  Edmund,  for  I  almost 
shudder  to  think  how  long;  I  have  wrestled  with  your 
bitter  poverty;  I  have  pared  cheese  for  you  that  you 


THE  FIRST  COMEDIAN  MAKES  HIS  BOW     213 

might  still  hold  on,  in  the  hope  of  better  times ;  and — and 
never  before  to-night  have  I  asked  anything  in  return. 
And  it  is  a  little  thing  enough  now  that  I  have  asked  it. 
Do  not  tell  me,  Edmund,  that  I  am  asking  too  much." 

**  You  don't  understand,  you  don't  understand,"  Broke 
muttered,  turning  away  his  face. 

"  Yes  I  do,  perfectly.  It  is  your  inordinate  pride  of 
race,  and  that  only,  intervening  between  us." 

Her  sudden  flare  into  vehemence  seemed  to  strengthen 
his  hand. 

**  Give  it  what  name  you  like,  but  the  matter  is  closed," 
he  said,  coming  back  to  his  air  of  finality.  *'  And  as  you 
choose  to  call  it  pride  a  man  worth  his  salt  has  a  right 
to  it.  A  man,  if  he  hasn't  it,  is  not  worth  the  coat  to 
his  shoulders." 

"  Its  intrinsic  value  does  not  justify  one  in  pandering 
to  it  until  it  becomes  a  lust." 

"  That  is  unjust,"  said  Broke,  feeling  the  barb.  "  I  am 
as  much  knocked  about  as  you  are — probably  more.  Do 
you  think  it  gives  me  pleasure?  He  is  as  much  mine  as 
he  is  yours.  He  has  my  name  to  him.  And  yet  you 
talk  about  my  pride  being  a  lust.  It  is  the  most  unfair 
thing  I  have  ever  heard  you  say.     It  is  not  like  you." 

She  had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  that  she  had  drawn 
blood.  But  she  reined  herself  in  tightly.  She  held  her 
hand  although  the  opportunity  was  open  to  her  of  hitting 
very  hard.  Nor  was  it  policy  that  dictated  the  act  of 
self-denial.  Judge  the  man  as  she  might,  he  was  her  hus- 
band. Than  she,  at  that  moment,  her  sex  could  show 
nothing  worthier. 

"  We  will  not  throw  stones  at  one  another,"  she  re- 
joined in  a  lower  voice.  *'  We  are  too  well  acquainted  for 
that.  But  you  must  not  wonder  that  I  complain  when  I 
find  myself  denied  the  smallest  thing  I  have  a  right  to 
look  for." 

Broke  carried  her  hand  to  his  lips  reverently. 

"  My  dear  girl,'[  he  said  huskily,  "  anything — anything 
but  that.  I  will  give  you  anything  but  that.  If  you  feel 
I  am  ungrateful  ask  me  for  something  else.     Do  you  think 


214  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

I  don't  recognize  what  you  have  done  for  us  all — what  you 
have  done  all  these  years  for  me  and  mine  ?  Do  you  think 
I  don't  know?  There  is  not  your  like  anywhere;  and  if 
it  would  give  you  pleasure  I  would  go  and  shout  it  in  the 
street.  You  have  been  the  pilot  that  has  kept  us  off  the 
rocks  all  these  years.  You  have  been  the  truest  friend 
man  ever  had.  If  you  consider  me  ungrateful  you — ah — 
wrong  me  deeply.  Come,  we  will  say  no  more.  We  are 
not  the  people  to  throw  stones  at  one  another." 

"  For  the  first  time  in  our  married  life,  Edmund,  I 
crave  a  boon  of  you." 

Broke  covered  his  face  with  his  hands  for  an  instant, 
and  when  he  removed  them  it  had  seemed  to  turn  grey. 

"  I  will  go  down  on  my  knees,  Edmund,  and  crave  it." 

Broke  averted  his  eyes. 

"  It  is  a  quarter-past  three,"  he  said.  "  Time  we  were 
in  bed." 

She  was  trembling  violently. 

"  You  deny  it  to  me,  Edmund  ?  " 

**  If  you  will  go  first,"  he  said,  opening  the  door  of  the 
room,  "  I  will  turn  out  the  lights." 

While  the  first  comedian  was  in  that  act,  the  first  faint 
salvo  of  applause  from  Olympus  might  have  saluted  the 
ear  of  the  attentive  listener. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

THE  JUMPING  OF   THE   LESSER  WITS 

FOR  several  days  after  the  news  had  been  told  to 
those  whom  it  immediately  concerned,  Mrs.  Broke 
hesitated  as  to  the  course  to  be  taken  in  regard  to  the 
world  at  large.  Her  husband  and  Maud  Wayling  were 
the  only  people  who  knew  at  present.  So  clearly  did  she 
foresee  the  complications  to  which  secrecy  would  give 
rise  that  she  was  keenly  desirous  that  the  young  wife 
should  be  established  at  once  on  a  proper  footing  in  her 
new  home.  In  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  the  case  it 
would  not  have  been  difficult  to  ignore  her  existence,  and 
in  some  eyes  that  might  seem  the  only  course  possible. 
But  Mrs.  Broke  was  a  woman  of  very  strong  common 
sense.  It  would  have  been  easy  to  relegate  the  girl  to 
the  limbo  whence  she  had  been  so  recently  evolved.  But 
to  take  no  higher  ground,  if  that  were  done  any  hope 
that  remained  of  a  reconciliation  between  father  and  son 
would  be  at  an  end. 

At  the  same  time,  if  the  girl's  status  was  disclosed  at 
onee,  very  little  good  would  be  done  to  her  or  to  Billy, 
and  it  would  certainly  be  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  harm 
that  must  accrue  to  themselves.  Not  only  would  it  pro- 
vide a  nine  days'  wonder  for  the  neighbourhood;  but 
tradesmen  might  see  a  pretext  in  it  for  pressing  their 
demands.  And  again,  even  a  resolution  such  as  hers  was 
not  without  a  sense  of  delicacy.  The  desire  to  stave  off 
the  dread  hour  of  bankruptcy  was  very  real.  The  in- 
nuendo of  cause  and  effect  would  be  a  little  too  sharp  to 
be  borne,  even  by  a  woman  who  in  soul  was  a  stoic. 

After  much  taking  of  thought,  Mrs.  Broke  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  for  a  time  it  would  be  wise  to  keep  the 
catastrophe  from  the  public  knowledge.     She  deemed  it 

215 


2i6  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

right,  however,  or  rather  politic — and  with  her  policy  was 
the  highest  form  of  virtue — that  the  girls  should  know. 
They  had  been  so  well  brought  up  that  she  felt  they  could 
be  trusted  with  a  secret  which  it  was  vitally  necessary 
to  the  well-being  of  all  should  so  remain. 

Fear  froze  their  pale  lips  when  they  heard  that  brief, 
fantastic  history.  To  these  sophisticated  creatures,  raised 
in  a  very  forcing-house  of  class  consciousness,  with  full 
many  a  generation  in  their  veins  of  the  narrow  spirit  it 
induces,  the  thing  was  like  a  nightmare.  At  first  they 
could  give  no  more  credence  to  it  than  if  it  had  been  the 
wildest  story  out  of  the  Arabian  Nights.  But  all  too  soon 
they  knew  that  for  once  the  inconceivable  had  come  to 
pass.  Their  mother  was  not  at  all  likely  to  tell  them  that 
which  was  untrue;  besides,  their  father's  speech  at  the 
dinner-table,  at  which  they  had  not  yet  ceased  to  shiver, 
still  rang  in  their  ears.  And  for  the  last  three  days  a 
curious  look  had  been  seen  upon  the  face  of  Maud  Way- 
ling. 

In  their  own  domain  they  foregathered  to  talk  with 
gloomy  excitement.  Also  they  would  have  wept;  only, 
with  the  exception  of  Delia,  they  all  had  their  mother's 
frugality  in  the  matter  of  tears.  Compared  with  the  rest 
Delia  was  allowed  to  be  a  great  adept  with  the  water- 
works; but  this  black  afternoon,  strangely  enough,  she 
was  the  only  one  who  showed  no  desire  to  make  use  of  her 
abilities  in  this  kind.  They  even  grew  a  little  angry  with 
her  indifference  on  the  present  occasion  to  the  value  of 
her  gift.  They  would  have  shed  fountains  had  not  na- 
ture been  so  austere.  But  Delia  who  could  have  done 
so  was  seen  to  refrain.  She  had  the  power  to  weep  copious 
tears  over  the  commonest  circumstance;  but  now,  when 
tears  were  expected  of  her,  and  in  a  sense  demanded,  as 
an  acknowledgment  of  the  poignant  distress  of  one  and 
all,  she  sat  looking  frightened,  indeed,  like  the  rest,  but 
without  so  much  as  one  in  her  eye.  It  was  inconsistent; 
and  in  one  who  could  weep  it  was  unfeeling,  not  to  say  an 
exhibition  of  bad  form. 

"  Delia,"  said  Joan,  "  I  don't  think  you  quite  ap — ap- 


THE  JUMPING  OF  THE  LESSER  WITS    217 

preciate  what  has  happened.  I  am  sure  you  would  take 
it  more  to  heart  if  you  did." 

"  I  don't  see  why  we  should  be  so  gloomy,"  said  Delia, 
"  if  they  were  really  in  love." 

"  If  you  talk  like  that,"  said  Joan,  ''  you  must  go  out  of 
the  room." 

Delia  looked  bewildered. 

"If  they  were  really  in  love,"  she  persisted,  with  a 
shake  of  the  head,  and  a  half-smile  to  herself. 

At  once  they  fell  upon  Delia.  With  enormous  gusto 
they  fell  upon  her.  They  rent  her  in  pieces.  They  proved 
to  their  own  sombre  satisfaction  that  her  point  of  view 
was  outrageous.  Delia,  however,  seemed  quite  incapable 
of  appreciating  the  nature  of  her  position.  That  subtle 
twist  in  her  youthful  mind,  to  which  their  attention  had 
been  directed  several  times  of  late,  had  never  been  so 
painfully  in  evidence. 

"  You  know  what  your  father  once  said  of  you,"  they 
reminded  her,  with  mournful  triumph.  "  You  have  not 
forgotten,  Delia,  that  your  father  once  said  that  had  you 
been  a  boy  you  might  have  grown  up  to  be  a  Radical." 

"  I  don't  quite  know  what  a  Radical  is,  but  perhaps  it 
is  something  that  is  rather  nice,"  said  their  youngest 
sister,  with  a  perfectly  horrid  impenitence. 

"  Delia !  "  they  sang  together. 

"  I  know  I  don't  see  things  as  you  see  them,  and  I  sup- 
pose I  am  very  wicked  because  I  don't;  but  it  would  not 
be  honest  to  say  I  do  if  I  do  not,  would  it  ?  " 

"  We  are  all  very  much  ashamed  of  you,"  said  Joan, 
with  a  sternness  that  made  Delia  feel  very  frightened. 
"  You  talk  just  like  a  person  out  of  a  common  family." 

"  I  feel  like  one,"  said  Delia. 

"  Delia !  "  they  gasped. 

"  I  know  I  ought  to  feel  myself  to  be  better  than  other 
people,  but  I  don't  at  all.  I  feel  just  the  meanest  and 
weakest,  the  smallest  and  most  wretched  person  you  can 
find  anywhere.  I  don't  feel  a  bit  better  than  anybody 
else,  although  my  name  is  Broke.  In  fact,  I  would  rather 
be  anybody  than  who  I  am.'* 


2i8  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  Delia !  "  they  shouted. 

This  was  anarchy. 

"  I  can't  help  it.  I  know  I  am  very  wicked  and  low- 
spirited,  but  that  is  how  I  feel.  There  is  no  pleasure  in 
trying  to  persuade  yourself  that  you  are  important  if 
you  know  you  are  not.  I  never  could  make-believe.  I 
daresay  that  is  why  kings  and  queens  are  so  miserable. 
Everybody  bows  down  to  them  and  says  nice  things  to 
them,  and  pretends  that  they  are  different  from  other 
people;  but  the  kings  and  queens  know  all  the  time  that 
they  are  not.     That  is  what  makes  them  so  unhappy." 

"  Do  you  mean  to  tell  us  that  Billy  is  no  better  than — 
than  this  person  out  of  a  shop  that  he  has  married  ? " 
Joan  demanded,  with  a  fierceness  that  made  Delia  quail. 

*'  Yes,  Joan,  I  do,"  said  her  youngest  sister,  trembling 
at  a  piece  of  effrontery  she  knew  to  be  without  a  parallel. 

"  I  shall  tell  your  father  what  you  say,"  said  Joan, 
withering  her  with  her  eyes. 

"  No,  you  must  not  do  that,"  interposed  Philippa. 
"  You  remember  what  your  father  said,  you  know,  Joan  ?  " 

"  Then  I  shall  tell  her  mother,"  said  the  Roman-hearted 
one. 

"  I  don't  care,"  said  Delia  drearily.  She  clasped  her 
hands  round  her  knees  and  fixed  her  eyes  on  the  celebrated 
picture  of  her  Uncle  Charles.  "  I  cannot  help  it.  It  is 
wrong  and  wicked  of  me,  but  I  cannot  help  it.  When 
you  are  unhappy  your  long  descent  does  not  comfort  you." 

Large  tears  filled  her  eyes  suddenly.  They  completely 
obliterated  the  coloured  outline  of  her  Uncle  Charles  on 
the  wall  before  them. 

"  You  don't  deserve  to  have  any  descent  whatever," 
said  Joan,  with  a  snort. 

"  I  wish  I  had  not,"  said  Delia  through  her  sobs. 

"  You  are  what  father  calls  a — a "  Joan  paused  with 

an  air  of  great  deliberation  in  order  to  hunt  the  one  word 
to  wipe  her  out.  "  You  are  what  your  father  would  call 
a  Gladstonian  Liberal.  You  bring  us  into  disgrace.  It 
is  selfish  and  debasing  and  weak-minded  to  talk  as  you 
talk.     You  are  unworthy  to  be  one  of  us.     Do  you  sup- 


THE  JUMPING  OF  THE  LESSER  WITS    219 

pose  your  father  would  have  forbidden  us  to  speak  of 
Billy  in  his  presence  if  Billy  had  not  been  awfully 
wicked  ?  " 

"  Don't,  please  don't,"  said  her  youngest  sister  piteously. 
"  I  cannot  bear  any  more — indeed  I  can't." 

"  You  shall  not  be  spared,"  said  Joan  in  a  voice  that 
was  merciless. 

If  haughty  looks  had  the  power  to  slay  it  is  to  be  feared 
that  Delia  would  not  have  survived  her  present  ignominy. 
Her  five  sisters  were  too  quaintly  the  children  o'f  their  fa- 
ther. They  also  were  subscribers  to  very  few  ideas,  but 
those  that  had  once  received  their  sanction  were  held 
with  an  absence  of  compromise  that  became  a  religion. 
This  heresy  of  their  youngest  sister's  they  felt  in  the 
bitterness  of  the  hour  to  be  a  stain  upon  their  loyalty. 
Officially  and  by  accident  of  birth  Delia  was  one  of  them- 
selves. It  was  one  of  the  disadvantages  arising  from  the 
grand  hereditary  principle. 

"  This  is  the  doing  of  that  horrid  man,  that  horrid  book- 
seller," said  Joan,  who  had  been  taking  thought  where  to 
have  the  offender  for  the  last  two  minutes. 

Delia  winced  as  though  she  had  been  burnt.  Her  face 
became  enveloped  in  a  sheet  of  flame. 

No  sooner  was  that  signal  hoisted  than  the  beholders 
knew  that  the  wretched  offender  was  delivered  into  their 
hands.  Never  was  a  condign  punishment  merited  more 
signally.  Not  only  was  it  a  crime  of  the  deepest  dye  to 
betray  an  emotion  for  any  such  person,  but  they  saw  in 
it  a  further  act  of  disloyalty.  Joan,  and  Joan  only,  the 
high  and  inflexible,  the  one  having  authority,  their  fa- 
ther's deputy,  must  take  up  this  matter  alone  and  in  per- 
son. She  must  administer  the  extreme  rigour  of  the  law, 
because  if  such  a  spirit  was  allowed  to  show  itself  without 
check  in  one  so  young  there  was  no  saying  to  what  it 
might  lead.  One  and  all  fell  back  in  silence  before  this 
august  instrument  of  justice. 

"  Delia,"  said  Joan  very  slowly,  "  your  words  and  con- 
duct are  disgraceful.  We  are  so  ashamed  of  you  that  we 
wish  you  were  not  our  sister." 


220  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

The  other  four  huddled  together  with  awe-stricken 
looks,  but  there  was  a  full  measure  of  approval  in  their 
fierce  eyes. 

An  Uncle  Charles  kind  of  look  came  over  Delia.  When 
it  appeared  in  him  it  never  failed  to  arouse  their  pity; 
but  now  in  their  young  sister  it  seemed  merely  contemp- 
tible. It  was  a  sort  of  look  you  sometimes  saw  in  the 
eyes  of  a  hound  when  it  was  going  to  be  beaten.  But 
Joan  was  not  the  one  to  spare  her. 

"  You  disgrace  us  all,"  said  Joan.  "  You  are  every- 
thing that  is  horrid,  wicked,  and  impossible." 

"I  am  not,"  said  Delia,  with  a  sudden  flutter  of  spirit 
that  was  quite  indefensible. 

"  Yes  you  are !  "  they  cried  in  chorus.  "  You  are  friends 
with  that  bookseller,  you  know  you  are.  You  have  hardly 
left  off  crying  since  he  went  away  to  London.  You  are 
disgracing  us  all.  It  is  quite  true  what  Joan  says:  you 
are  everything  that  is  horrid,  wicked,  and  impossible. 
You  are  a  Radical,  a  Socialist,  and  a  Democrat;  you 
know  you  are,  and  you  cannot  deny  it.  We  don't  know 
how  you  dare  to  cry  about  that  bookseller.  If  you  must 
cry  over  something  you  might  at  least  have  the  decency 
to  reserve  your  tears  for  a  gentleman." 

"  Or  why  not  a  dog  or  a  tame  pheasant,"  said  Philippa, 
whose  practical  mind  was  so  much  admired,  "  if  you  feel 
you  must  cry  over  something." 

Delia  had  been  crushed  to  silence  so  long  as  their  taunts 
were  levelled  at  her  alone.  She  had  so  poor  an  opinion 
of  herself  that  she  felt  she  must  deserve  them.  But  now 
they  were  hurled  at  one  whose  character  was  unassailable, 
she  felt  there  was  firm  ground  to  take  her  stand  upon. 

"  You  shall  not  talk  of  him  like  that,"  she  said,  with  a 
sudden  flash  of  her  blue  eyes  while  a  tear  started  to  run 
along  her  nose.  "  He  is  as  much  a  gentleman  as  my 
father  or  Billy  or  Uncle  Charles  is.  He  could  not  be 
guilty  of  a  mean  action ;  I  don't  think  he  could  be  capable 
of  a  mean  thought;  and  if  you  think  it  is  a  disgrace  for 
him  to  be  poor,  the  disgrace  is  yours  for  having  such  ideas. 


THE  JUMPING  OF  THE  LESSER  WITS    221 

It  would  be  impossible  for  him  to  have  such  opinions  and 
to  speak  as  horridly  as  you  are  speaking  now." 

"  A  little  horror  of  a  bookseller !  A  little  worm  of  a 
man !  "  they  snorted. 

Their  youngest  sister  was  not  quite  so  defenceless  as 
they  had  supposed.  Indeed,  she  was  exulting  in  new 
courage  because  desperation  had  found  weapons  for  her. 
And  she  knew  they  were  far  more  formidable  than  any 
they  could  wield.  She  had  greater  resources  of  vocabu- 
lary than  had  they,  a  livelier  imagination,  and  also  an 
array  of  learned  parallels  with  which  to  assault  them. 
They  had  always  boasted  of  their  tremendous  contempt 
for  books ;  they  should  now  see  how  useful  it  was  to  have 
them  for  your  friends. 

"  You  do  not  deserve  to  be  argued  with,"  said  Delia. 
"  Your  minds  are  so  poor  and  wretched  that  they  are  not 
worthy  of  notice.  But  I  will  just  say  this.  I  was  read- 
ing the  other  day  a  book  by  a  great  author  that  you  have 
not  even  heard  of,  so  it  is  no  use  to  tell  you  his  name. 
The  book  was  called  The  Book  of  Snobs,  and  the  people 
in  it  were  so  horrid  and  cruel  and  mean-minded  that  I 
felt  sure  they  did  not  exist  out  of  the  writer's  imagina- 
tion. But  I  now  find  that  they  do.  You  are  those  peo- 
ple. The  author  meant  you,  I  am  certain,  and  I  am  quite 
ashamed  to  be  connected  with  you.  I  don't  suppose  you 
know  what  a  snob  is.  I  will  tell  you:  a  snob  is  a  mean 
admirer  of  mean  things.  Say  that  over  to  yourselves; 
and  I  wish  you  would  read  the  book.  Then  you  would 
see  just  what  you  look  like  to  other  people." 

They  were  quite  taken  aback  for  the  moment.  This 
was  not  the  Delia  they  knew;  the  Delia  they  could  snub 
and  bully  with  impunity.  This  was  an  armed  and  cour- 
ageous Delia,  who  single-handed  could  engage  and  pum- 
mel the  whole  five  of  them  at  once.  They  had  never  been 
so  astonished  in  their  lives.  Fancy  a  silly  little  kid  with 
filmy  blue  eyes  with  lashes  to  them  that  curled  up  at  the 
ends  in  a  most  foolish  manner,  a  silly  little  kid  who  wept 
when  she  pored  with  her  legs  crossed  over  a  fairy  story, 


■222  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

to  be  capable  of  giving  such  a  display  as  that.  For  the 
moment  their  breaths  were  completely  taken  away  by  it; 
and  one  and  all  were  smarting  considerably. 

As  usual  in  the  hour  of  crisis  they  paused  and  waited 
for  their  natural  leader.  That  redoubtable  young  woman 
slowly  gathered  herself  for  the  greatest  intellectual  effort 
she  had  ever  been  called  up  to  make. 

"  Books,  always  books  now,"  said  Joan  at  a  leisure  quite 
magnificently  forensic.  "  What  do  books  matter  ?  They 
are  written  by  vulgar  people,  as  a  rule,  and  it  is  generally 
vulgar  people  who  read  what  is  written  in  them.  They 
are  not  used  after  leaving  school,  and  they  are  not  much 
use  before  one  leaves.  I  never  learnt  anything  from  a 
single  one  myself,  except  from  the  Badminton  hunting 
book  that  my  father  has  got  in  the  library.  They  look 
rather  nice  in  their  pretty  bindings  in  mother's  room ;  and 
one  or  two  on  the  tables  in  the  drawing-room  look  all 
right,  but  what  good  are  they  ?  I  always  did  despise  them, 
and  now  I  have  seen  a  real  author,  I  shall  despise  them 
more.  I  knew  that  professional  authors — Aunt  Emma  is 
not  a  professional  author — were  generally  poor  and  rather 
shabby,  and  did  not  cut  their  hair ;  but  until  I  had  seen  your 
friend  the  bookseller,  I  didn't  really  know  what  worms 
they  were.  By  comparison  Wilkins  looks  respectable  and 
Porson  quite  a  gentleman.  Why,  Shakespeare,  the  lead- 
ing author  of  them  all,  was  a  common  poacher,  and  if  he 
had  come  before  father  at  the  Sessions  he  would  have 
had  to  go  to  prison." 

"  You  are  beneath  contempt,"  said  Delia. 

"  So  Aunt  Emma  says,"  chimed  the  other  four  eagerly. 
"  Now  that  her  young  man  has  taught  you  to  be  bookish 
you  begin  to  give  yourself  airs  like  she  does.  You  are 
learning  the  same  trick  of  talking  at  us,  although  you  have 
not  got  your  voice  quite  so  high  up  at  present.  But  you 
must  not  think  we  shall  stand  it  from  you,  you  silly, 
cheeky  little  kid,  because  we  shall  not,  Joan,  shall  we  ?  " 

"  No,  indeed,"  said  that  warrior. 

"  I  hate  Aunt  Emma  too.  She  is  beneath  contempt 
also." 


THE  JUMPING  OF  THE  LESSER  WITS    223 

"  But  you  try  to  talk  like  her." 

"I  don't!" 

"  Yes,  you  do." 

The  reference  to  Aunt  Emma  had  been  an  inspiration. 
It  had  completely  taken  the  wind  out  of  Delia's  sails. 
The  tables  were  turned  at  once.  Could  it  be  possible, 
thought  Delia,  that  her  mind  at  all  resembled  Aunt  Em- 
ma's? It  would  be  hopeless  to  make  her  sisters  see  any 
difference.  In  their  opinion  to  be  a  lover  of  books  was  to 
be  an  Aunt  Emma :  a  synonym  for  all  that  was  pretentious 
and  insincere. 

They  routed  Delia  utterly  and  completely  by  this  chance 
shot.  She  struck  her  colours  altogether  before  this  un- 
lucky mention  of  the  author  of  Poses  in  the  Opaque. 
The  fervour  of  the  prophet  preaching  a  strange,  splendid 
gospel  to  Islam  was  in  her  no  more.  She  was  beaten  out 
of  the  field;  and  put  to  flight  to  her  bedroom,  that  sanc- 
tuary wherein  she  could  take  refuge  in  tears. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

A  DESCENT   INTO   THE  AVERNUS   OF   BROAD  FARCE 

MANY  hours  of  late  had  Delia  spent  coiled  up  on  her 
counterpane.  In  the  very  hour  of  her  friend's  go- 
ing away  she  had  been  overcome  by  the  sense  of  loss. 
She  would  look  on  him  no  more.  The  fact  seemed  too 
cruel  to  be  borne.  A  spectre  had  glided  across  her  life, 
only  to  vanish  after  she  had  gazed  upon  it  for  one  brief 
but  fatal  instant,  to  leave  her  haunted  for  ever  in  the  man- 
ner of  the  unhappy  knight  of  La  B'elle  Dame  Sans  Merci. 
He  had  cast  a  spell  upon  her  which  he  alone  had  the  power 
to  remove;  and  without  any  recognition  of  her  pass  he 
rode  away  into  those  immeasurable  mountain  fastnesses 
in  which  he  would  be  lost  forever. 

He  was  gone,  leaving  only  a  memory.  He  could  never 
return.  An  unpitying  introspection  had  taught  her  that 
she  was  too  poor  a  specimen  of  her  kind  to  arouse  an 
emotion  in  that  high  and  noble  spirit.  The  knowledge 
did  but  render  the  craving  to  do  so  more  insurgent.  If 
only  she  could  have  conveyed  a  faint  sense  of  her  devo- 
tion; if  only  one  little  spark  of  recognition  could  have 
been  kindled  in  him ;  if  only  her  nature  had  had  the  power 
to  walk  with  his  in  the  humblest  way,  she  would  have 
asked  no  morel 

He  could  not  know  now  and  would  not  know  ever.  He 
had  gone  from  her  without  a  sign,  leaving  her  to  mourn 
the  day  on  which  he  had  come  into  her  life.  She  would 
read  his  name  in  the  London  newspapers,  but  of  her  exist- 
ence there  would  be  no  record.  In  a  year  or  perhaps  less 
he  would  not  remember  her  at  all.  Even  now  he  might 
be  erasing  her  from  the  tablets  of  his  mind.     From  year 

224 


THE  AVERNUS  OF  BROAD  FARCE        225 

to  year  she  must  bear  her  adoration  to  the  grave  without 
hope  of  honour,  without  hope  of  recompense.  He  would 
never  know  what  candles  she  kept  burning  before  the 
altar  of  his  memory. 

Against  the  instinct  that  pleaded  with  her  had  she  clung 
to  the  hope  that  she  would  not  be  kept  desolate.  Right 
up  to  that  last  day  had  she  clung  with  a  fearing  spirit  to 
the  thought  that  was  hardly  more  than  a  wish,  to  the 
hope  that  was  hardly  more  than  a  desire,  that  he  would 
give  her  just  one  token  by  which  she  might  recognize  that 
she  counted  in  the  sum  of  things.  But  not  a  crumb  did 
he  bestow.  He  bade  her  good-bye  with  his  air  of  slightly 
ironical  tenderness.     There  was  no  more  than  that. 

A  thousand  times  did  she  recall  his  voice;  a  thousand 
times  did  chance  words  of  his  come  back  to  her.  She  had 
httle  of  the  stoical  pride  of  her  race.  It  was  not  hers  to 
cover  the  ravages  in  her  breast  with  an  outward  smile ;  her 
heaviness  of  eye,  her  lassitude  were  there  for  all  to  read. 
Her  sisters  read  with  fierce  contempt.  Every  day  it  was 
dealt  in  fuller  measure.  They  threatened  to  bar  the  door 
of  their  common  room  against  her.  Her  mother  was  too 
much  occupied  with  graver  matters  to  notice  her  unhap- 
piness.  Besides,  their  ailments  were  so  few  that  they 
hardly  ever  troubled  her ;  and  when  they  did  were  always 
so  simple  that  the  most  homely  of  prescriptions  could  set 
them  right.  Her  father  was  too  little  addicted  to  the 
habit  of  observing  anything  to  notice  the  symptoms  of 
her  subtle  disease.  Besides,  it  was  so  elusive  that  in  any 
case  it  would  have  defeated  him.  If  you  broke  a  limb 
you  knew  where  you  were ;  it  could  be  set  in  splints ;  but 
you  do  not  ask  a  horse  doctor  to  diagnose  a  disease  of 
the  mind. 

Strangely  it  was  her  Uncle  Charles,  a  person  given 
over  entirely  to  the  drinking  of  whisky,  who  first  called 
public  attention  to  her  distress.  One  rainy  afternoon 
when  they  were  drinking  their  tea  in  the  drawing-room, 
as  a  concession  to  the  presence  of  Aunt  Emma,  who  had 
come  on  an  errand  of  charity,  and  yet  more  particularly 
to  that  of  their  Uncle  Charles,  who  also  had  happened  to 


226  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

look  in  not  knowing  Aunt  Emma  was  there,  he  took  Delia's 
chin  between  his  thumb  and  his  finger,  and  peered  at  her 
closely  with  his  head  cocked  funnily  to  one  side. 

"  I  tell  you  what  it  is,"  he  said.  "  The  little  filly's  oflf 
her  feed.     Has  been  for  the  past  fortnight." 

This  solicitude  drew  down  a  great  deal  more  of  the 
public  attention  upon  Delia  than  she  felt  able  to  support. 

"  She's  right  enough,"  said  her  father. 

"  The  child  has  probably  been  over-eating  herself,"  said 
her  Aunt  Emma  after  a  steady  examination  through  her 
glasses. 

Her  mother  gave  her  the  benefit  of  a  silent  scrutiny. 
She  concluded  it  by  smiling  faintly.  There  was  little  that 
was  hidden  from  those  ruthless  eyes. 

"  I  tell  you  I  don't  like  the  looks  of  the  tit,"  said  her 
Uncle  Charles,  who  had  waited  in  vain  for  a  confirmation 
of  his  opinion.     "  I  should  let  her  see  the  vet." 

"  Nonsense,  my  dear  Charles,"  said  her  mother  amiably. 
"  There  is  really  nothing  the  matter.  Her  studies  have 
perhaps  excited  her  a  little.  But  they  are  over  now  for  a 
time.  Her  tutor  has  very  inconsiderately  run  away  and 
left  her." 

Instead  of  looking  at  her  brother  when  she  gave  this 
piece  of  information,  Mrs.  Broke  allowed  her  eyes  to  rest 
placidly  upon  the  face  of  her  youngest  daughter. 

"  It  is  an  act  of  inconsideration,  not  to  say  incivility, 
not  to  say  impertinence,"  said  Lady  Bosket,  winding  her- 
self up  word  by  word  into  a  state  of  indignation,  "  and  in 
the  letter  I  wrote  to  him  upon  the  subject  I  took  the  oppor- 
tunity of  expressing  my  displeasure.  If  a  particular  task 
is  undertaken  one  looks  for  it  to  be  fulfilled." 

"  But  the  circumstances  were  a  little  exceptional,  were 
they  not?  "  said  Mrs.  Broke.  '*  Had  he  not  the  offer  of  a 
more  important  post?  I  understood  so  at  least.  In  the 
circumstances  one  can  hardly  expect  a  man  of  ability  to 
waste  his  time  with  a  dull  and  backward  child." 

"  He  did  not  hold  it  to  be  a  waste  of  time  before  this 
post  came  to  him.  And  pray,  by  whose  agency  did  it 
come  to  him  ?  " 


THE  AVERNUS  OF  BROAD  FARCE   227 

"  By  yours,  my  dear  ?  " 

"  Well,  perhaps,  one  does  count  a  little  with  editors 
these  days,"  purred  the  authoress  modestly. 

"  Truly  an  interesting  sidelight,  my  dear,  upon  the  world 
of  letters,"  said  her  sister-in-law  in  her  melodious  voice. 
"  Strange,  my  dear,  is  it  not,  how  the  flood  tide  of  one 
mighty  reputation  bears  everything  before  it?" 

"  So  true,  my  dear.  Poor  dear  Mr.  Gladstone  and  I 
often  used  to  commiserate  each  other  upon  that  point." 

"  Also  the  poor  devils  the  publishers,  I  suppose,"  said 
Lord  Bosket,  taking  a  sip  of  his  favourite  beverage,  "  when 
you  hawk  round  your  prose  to  every  house  in  London  to 
squeeze  the  last  ha'penny." 

"  Charles,  what  do  you  mean  ?"  said  the  authoress, 
raising  her  glasses  imperiously  by  their  tortoise-shell 
handle. 

"  Beg  pardon,  my  mistake,"  said  the  culprit  humbly. 

"  As  usual  a  prophet  is  not  without  honour,  save  in  one's 
own  country,"  said  the  gifted  lady,  trying  to  efface  the 
banality  of  her  spouse  with  a  gentle  and  refined  humour. 

"  You  may  be  a  profit  in  your  own  country,"  said  her 
lord,  "but  you  ain't  a  bare  livin'  in  theirs.  I  know  one 
publisher  feller  who  says  that  if  you  will  insist  on  your 
present  royalties  it  will  pay  him  to  draw  down  the  blinds 
and  look  about  for  an  honest  livin'." 

"  Charles,  I  forbid  you  to  discuss  these  disgusting  com- 
mercial details  in  my  presence." 

"  Wrong  again,"  murmured  Lord  Bosket  sotto  voce  to 
his  nieces.  "  Crushed  again.  Never  open  my  mouth  but 
what  I  put  my  foot  in  it." 

"  Has  your  last  beautiful  and  ennobling  volume  been  a 
success,  my  dear?"  asked  Mrs.  Broke,  replenishing  the 
teapot. 

"  Not  half,"  said  Lord  Bosket.  "  I  read  in  a  newspaper 
the  other  day  that  it  has  stirred  the  great  heart  of  the 
American  continent  to  its  profoundest  depths.  They  want 
her  to  cross  the  Pond  and  give  'em  a  series  of  lectures. 
So  do  L  If  she  takes  out  the  same  series  as  she  has  given 
at  home  she'll  be  a  success.     I'll  lay  even  money  that  the 


228  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

great  heart  of  the  American  continent  is  stirred  a  bit 
more.     They  don't  know  what  they  are  askin'." 

The  valour  that  was  in  Lord  Bosket  this  afternoon  was 
unusual.  As  meek  as  a  mouse  as  a  rule  in  the  presence  of 
his  gifted  wife  he  seldom  went  out  of  his  way  to  court  her 
displeasure.  But  when  a  spark  of  spirit  did  happen  to 
assert  itself  in  him  it  was  generally  in  the  presence  of 
others.  He  knew  that  for  the  time  being  he  was  safe, 
for  the  last  thing  his  spouse  desired  was  to  make  a  public 
display  of  her  prowess.  Anything  in  the  nature  of  a  scene 
was  of  course  vulgar.  On  those  occasions  when  her  lord 
had  partaken  of  just  the  right  quantity  of  whisky  to  enable 
him  to  merge  a  proper  discretion  in  a  natural  love  of  chaff, 
Lady  Bosket  waited,  in  the  phrase  of  ladies  in  a  less 
exalted  station  in  life,  "  she  waited  until  she  got  him 
home." 

Probably  the  true  reason  for  Lord  Bosket's  intrepidity 
this  afternoon  was  that  he  was  in  a  rather  uncomfortable 
frame  of  mind.  Knowledge  which  had  recently  come  to 
him  had  disturbed  his  peace.  He  was  distressed  not  so 
much  on  his  own  account — he  was  too  heedless  of  the 
world  to  care  particularly  of  the  figure  he  might  cut  in  it 
— but  rather  because  of  the  dire  blow  that  was  about  to 
descend  on  his  brother-in-law,  whose  spirit  could  brook 
no  public  ignominy.  With  his  usual  solicitude  for  others, 
he  felt  himself  already  to  be  responsible  for  the  galling 
of  that  proud  breast.  It  was  he  who  had  urged  Broke 
to  accept  a  seat  on  the  board  of  the  Thames  Valley  Gold- 
fields  Syndicate.  He  had  seen  in  it  a  heaven-sent  oppor- 
tunity for  a  beautiful,  ineffectual  angel  of  commerce  to 
reap  a  golden  harvest,  without  risking  one  of  the  pence 
with  which  he  could  so  ill  afford  to  gamble.  Lord  Bosket 
was  there  that  afternoon,  however,  to  inform  Broke  that 
the  great  scheme  had  fallen  to  the  ground.  Moreover,  it 
was  his  disagreeable  duty  to  prepare  the  nice  mind  of  this 
paladin  for  a  development  that  could  be  trusted  to  shock 
it  terribly. 

"  I  saw  Salmon  this  mornin',  Edmund,  and  he  says  we 
have  got  to  face  the  music." 


THE  AVERNUS  OF  BROAD  FARCE        229 

Brokers  bewilderment  was  so  frank  that  Lord  Bosket 
felt  it  necessary  to  be  a  little  more  lucid. 

"  Salmon  says,  you  know,  that  there  is  no  gold  in  the 
Thames  Valley  after  all,  and  that  those  experts  were  all 
wrong.  And  he  says  the  shareholders  are  kickin'  up  a 
shine  and  are  askin'  for  their  money  back.  Salmon  says 
they  won't  get  it.  The  newspapers  are  against  us  dead, 
and  they  say  that  when  the  matter  is  sifted  to  the  bot- 
tom it  will  be  found  to  be  about  the  biggest  take-in  of  the 
century.  Nice  for  us  directors,  what?  A  public  inquiry 
has  been  ordered,  and  they  are  sayin*  in  town  that  if  we 
directors  get  our  deserts  we  shall  find  ourselves  in  the 
dock." 

Had  Lord  Bosket  planted  a  bomb  on  the  carpet  the 
effect  upon  Broke  could  not  have  been  more  dramatic.  He 
sat  up  in  his  chair  with  a  painfully  startled  face,  with 
much  of  the  same  wild  look  in  it  that  his  wife  had  seen 
when  she  told  him  of  his  son's  marriage.  But  on  this 
occasion  he  did  not  vent  his  feelings  in  words  beyond  the 
monosyllable — 

"Oh!" 

Lord  Bosket  made  an  effort  to  soften  the  rather  tragic 
impression  his  words  had  created.  He  felt  a  pang;  in- 
deed, Broke's  distress  would  have  melted  a  harder  heart. 

"  I  would  not  think  too  much  about  it,  Edmund,  if  I 
were  you.  Salmon  is  a  cute  fish  and  knows  his  way  about 
under  the  water.  He'll  find  a  way  out,  don't  you  worry. 
He  says  if  anybody  is  to  blame  it's  the  experts ;  and  it  is 
not  likely  that  we  directors  would  be  holding  so  many 
shares  if  we  had  not  been  taken  in." 

"  But  I  don't  hold  any,"  said  Broke  in  a  hollow  voice. 

"  Oh,  yes  you  do,  my  boy,"  said  his  brother-in-law. 
"  You  could  hardly  be  chairman  of  the  company  without. 
And  I  understand  that  Salmon  took  the  precaution  of 
transferring  a  block  of  his  to  you  in  case  of  accident." 

Suddenly  Lord  Bosket's  jaw  dropped. 

"  Yes ;  and  that  reminds  me,  he  has  sold  'em  again !  He 
unloaded  three  weeks  ago  and  some  of  us  were  told  to  do 
the  same.    They  were  then  above  par — lord  knows  how 


230  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

much! — and  now  you  can  have  Thames  Valley  Goldfields 
at  fourpence  a  hundred  if  you  want  'em.  Yes,  by  Jove, 
when  you  come  to  look  at  things,  they  certainly  do  seem 
a  bit  queer !  " 

Poor  Broke  sat  in  a  huddle.  The  startled  look  that  still 
haunted  his  face  was  like  that  of  a  man  who  had  just  seen 
a  ghost. 

"  Surely  this  is  a  sequel  that  was  to  be  foreseen,"  said 
'Lady  Bosket.  "  Charles,  I  predicted  it  from  the  first. 
People  who  associate  themselves  with  such  atrocious  per- 
sons as  this  Lord  Salmon  must  be  prepared  to  take  the 
iconsequences.  You  might  at  least  have  had  the  decency 
to  respect  my  feelings,  Charles.  Not  only  do  you  bring 
your  own  name  to  the  mire,  but  what  is  far  worse,  you 
bring  mine.  Why  should  one  strive  to  keep  it  fragrant 
among  one's  fellows  if  you  merely  debase  it  on  every  pos- 
sible occasion.  As  for  Edmund,  I  am  sure  he  is  the  last 
man  in  the  world  to  be  able  to  afford  to  bring  his  name 
lower  than  it  is  already." 

"  You  let  Edmund  alone !  "  interposed  her  lord.  "  Don't 
you  mind  her,  my  boy.  I  take  all  the  blame  for  this. 
But  Salmon  will  find  a  way  out  all  right.  It  may  be  a  bit 
awkward  for  us  at  first,  now  that  these  shareholders  and 
people  are  showing  their  teeth,  but  we  shall  come  out  top 
dog  in  the  end,  I'll  lay  a  monkey." 

"  We — ah — must  refund  every  farthing  of  their  money," 
said  Broke. 

He  had  been  sunk  in  thought,  and  this  was  the  result  of 
that  painful  process. 

"  A  little  item  of  four  million  sterling,"  said  his  brother- 
in-law.  "  I  should  like  to  see  Fishy  refunding  mere  baga- 
telles of  that  sort." 

"  It  must  be  done,"  said  Broke  firmly.     "  Every  penny." 

"  Well,  my  boy,  sell  your  house  and  furniture  and  throw 
in  the  mortgages  on  your  land,  and  see  how  much  that 
makes  towards  it.  The  affair  has  an  ugly  look,  I'll  admit ; 
but  Salmon  says  that  all  of  us,  shareholders  and  directors 
alike,  were  in  the  hands  of  the  experts.  And  now  the  ex- 
perts are  proved  to  be  wrong  they  throw  the  blame  on  us. 


THE  AVERNUS  OF  BROAD  FARCE        231 

Salmon  says  there  is  no  law  in  the  world  that  can  touch 
us." 

"  There  is  one  in  heaven,"  said  Lady  Bosket, 

"  It  didn't  prevent  you  from  clearing  a  cool  three  thou- 
sand, missis,  by  selling  at  the  proper  time.  Hullo,  here's 
Salmon  himself." 

The  announcement  at  this  moment  of  that  peer  was 
sufficiently  dramatic.  His  appearance  was  no  less  so. 
Entering  with  his  habitual  air  of  victory,  signs  of  dejec- 
tion or  of  hesitation  were  far  to  seek. 

He  took  a  chair  magnificently. 

"They  have  arranged  a  fete  and  gala  for  the  meeting 
on  Monday,"  he  said.  "  But  I  think  there  are  one  or  two 
things  we  shall  be  able  to  put  before  it.  If  we  can't  man- 
age that  parcel  of  crows  and  pigeons  it's  a  pity.  Country 
parsons  mostly,  and  half-pay  soldier  men.  I  wonder  if 
they  think  we  are  going  to  take  it  lying  down.  They  had 
the  prospectus  to  guide  them  the  same  as  we  had;  there 
were  the  reports  of  the  experts:  Goodliffe's  analysis  of 
the  mud  taken  from  under  Battersea  Bridge;  Thomson's 
Theory  of  the  Precious  Metal  Deposits  found  on  the  fore- 
shore at  the  Welsh  Harp ;  Wilson's  article  on  Bimetallism, 
and  God  knows  what  besides;  and  now  they've  put  their 
money  down  they  calmly  ask  to  take  it  up  again.  Do  they 
think  we  are  in  business  for  our  health  ?  If  they  had  had 
the  nous  to  clear  out  when  we  did,  I  wonder  if  they  would 
be  wanting  now  to  repudiate  their  shares.  Their  game 
is  heads  I  win,  tails  you  lose;  but  that's  hardly  good 
enough  for  Saul  Salmon,  thank  you." 

"  Hear,  hear,  and  applause ! "  said  Lord  Bosket.  "  I 
must  say  as  a  member  of  the  Board,  our  Chairman  talks 
like  a  cock-angel  with  wings  and  a  white  nightshirt.  I 
don't  often  have  a  bet,  Fishy,  as  you  know,  but  I  would 
like  to  lay  a  monkey  on  you,  my  son,  and  back  you  both 
ways." 

"  You  would  not  be  wrong.  Bos,  if  you  did,"  said  Lord 
Salmon  heartily.  "  They  shall  see  on  Monday  whether  a 
jury  of  matrons  is  going  to  heckle  me." 

"  Ye — es,  I  am  afraid  they  are  on  the  wrong  hos,"  said 


2Z2  BROKE  OF  COVE^DEN 

Lord  Bosket,  with  a  quaintly  reflective  glance  at  the  glass 
he  held  in  his  hand. 

It  was  at  this  moment  that  Broke  was  seen  to  draw 
himself  up  to  regard  his  unwelcome  visitor. 

"  Lord  Salmon,  I  should  like  to — ah — say  a  word.  I 
wish  in  the — ah — fullest  manner  to — ah — repudiate  the 
whole  of  this  transaction." 

"  So  do  several  other  people,"  said  Lord  Salmon  drily. 

"  In  the  most  unconditional  way  I  wash  my  hands  of 
what  I  do  not  hesitate  to  call  a — ah — a  shady  business." 

"  Don't  hesitate  to  call  it  what  you  like ;  but  we  are  all 
in  the  same  boat.  You  are  one  of  the  crew,  the  same  as 
we  are." 

Brokers  face  turned  a  deep  tawny. 

"  I  never  intended  to  go  on  this  board  of  directors.  I 
was  led  into  so  doing  against  my — ah — judgment.  At  the 
time  I  did  not  know  precisely — ah — what  I  was  undertak- 
ing.    I  can  only  regret  my — ah — ignorance." 

The  painfully  agitated  gentleman  had  the  greatest  diffi- 
culty in  making  this  statement. 

"  Woa — easy,  Edmund,"  said  his  brother-in-law,  in  a 
tone  of  pity.  "  Let  it  go,  there's  a  good  feller,  and  it  will 
all  come  right.     It  will,  Fishy,  won't  it  ?  " 

"  Not  much  doubt  about  that,"  said  Lord  Salmon,  ac- 
cepting a  cup  of  tea  from  the  excessively  gracious  hands 
of  Mrs.  Broke. 

"  Sugar,  Lord  Salmon  ?  " 

Such  was  the  sweetness  of  the  smile  she  lifted  up  to  him 
that  the  delighted  financier  said: 

"  Look  into  the  cup,  ma'am,  and  it  won't  be  needed." 

Lady  Bosket  raised  her  glasses  impressively  to  gaze  at 
the  epigrammatist,  while  her  eldest  niece  seated  opposite 
to  her  counted  mentally  as  far  as  one  hundred  and  seven. 

''  Lord  Salmon,"  said  Broke,  whose  agitation  grew 
more  painful  at  every  word  he  spoke,  "  I  cannot  help — ah 
— thinking  that  I  have  been  hoodwinked,  and — ah — that 
I  have  been  made  your  tool.  I  am  a  plain  man  and  speak 
on  these  occasions  what  is  in  my — ah — my  mind." 

"  Quite  right,"  Lord  Salmon  nodded  his  head  in  ap- 


THE  AVERNUS  OF  BROAD  FARCE        233 

proval.     "  Have  the  habit  myself.     Admire  you  for  it." 

"  I  don't  ask  for  your — ah — your  admiration,  Lord  Sal- 
mon. As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  would — ah — rather  be  with- 
out it.  But  I  may  say,  Lord  Salmon,  that  I  shall — ah — 
conceive  it  to  be  my — ah — duty  to  attend  this  meeting  on 
Monday,  when  I — ah — shall  make  a  statement  to  the  share- 
holders." 

He  concluded  his  painful  exordium  by  pulling  a  volumi- 
nous bandanna  handkerchief  out  of  his  pocket  and  wiping 
his  head  with  vigour. 

Lord  Salmon  could  not  forbear  to  laugh  loudly,  and  by 
so  doing  chose  to  ignore  a  series  of  energetic  signals  that 
Lord  Bosket  directed  to  him. 

"  You  ought  to  go  on  the  stage,  my  dear  fellow,"  said 
the  financier.  "You  are  a  humorist  and  no  mistake. 
Here  am  I  trying  to  put  you  in  for  a  good  thing,  and  here 
are  you  turning  round  to  bite  the  hand  of  friendship. 
Why,  do  you  know  what  I  did?  I  said  to  myself,  there 
should  be  a  few  crumbs  to  be  picked  up  here;  it  will  do 
Broke  no  harm  to  be  in  at  this.  And  what  do  I  do?  I 
daresay  Bosket  has  told  you.  No?  Well,  I  set  aside  for 
you  five  hundred  pounds  worth  of  my  own  script ;  partly 
because  I  want  to  do  you  a  good  turn,  and  partly  because 
it  looks  well  for  the  chairman  of  the  directors  to  be  as 
deep  as  possible  in  the  concern.  And  when  a  few  weeks 
ago  the  right  moment  came,  I  converted  that  five  hundred 
pounds  worth  of  shares  into  a  little  matter  of  three  thou- 
sand pounds  in  hard  cash.  There  is  a  cheque  for  that 
amount  in  my  pocket-book.  And  yet,  my  dear  fellow,  you 
sit  there  and  give  me  the  rough  side  to  your  tongue.  Still, 
I  don't  bear  malice;  others  might,  don't  you  know,  but 
personally  I  understand  you,  and  I  like  you.  You  old- 
fashioned  country  big  wigs  are  a  funny  tempered  lot ;  but 
I  want  you  to  understand  that  as  a  mere  matter  of  prin- 
ciple I  wish  you  well." 

"  I — ah — dissociate  myself  entirely  from  your  schemes, 
Lord  Salmon.  I — ah — decline  to  discuss  the — ah — matter 
further.  I — ah — repudiate  the  whole  transaction,  and  on 
Monday  I  propose  to — ah — make  my  position  clear  to  the 


234  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

shareholders  of  the  company.  In  the  meantime,  Lord 
Salmon,  I — ah — wash  my  hands  of  the  whole  affair." 

"You  wash  your  hands  of  this?"  Lord  Salmon's  air 
was  one  of  keen  enjoyment. 

With  carefully  studied  effect  he  took  out  his  pocket- 
book,  and  produced  a  cheque  for  three  thousand,  one  hun- 
dred and  thirty-five  pounds,  three  shillings  and  ninepence 
drawn  in  Broke's  favour.  He  rose  from  his  chair  and 
parried  it  over  to  him. 

"This— ah— for  me?" 

Broke's  bewilderment  seemed  very  great. 

"Of  course,  of  course,  my  dear  fellow ! " 

Again  Lord  Salmon  burst  into  loud  laughter. 

In  the  meantime  Broke  had  looked  at  the  document, 
and  by  a  superhuman  effort  of  the  mind  was  able  to  divine 
its  nature.  With  great  deliberation  he  began  to  tear  it 
into  very  small  pieces.  In  the  act  his  fingers  trembled  so 
much  that  some  of  the  fragments  fell  on  to  the  carpet. 

There  came  a  rather  painful  silence.  It  was  broken  by 
the  pathetic  tones  of  Lord  Bosket. 

"  Edmund,  you  are  a  fool.  I  should  ha'  thought  you 
had  more  sense  than  to  throw  away  money.  It's  an  ex- 
pensive luxury ;  not  many  fellers  can  afford  it." 

"  It's  as  good  as  a  play,"  laughed  Lord  Salmon. 

Without  trusting  himself  to  speak  a  word,  Broke  flung 
the  last  of  the  fragments  of  paper  on  to  the  carpet,  slowly 
got  up  from  his  chair,  and  stalked  out  of  the  room.  As 
the  door  closed  behind  him.  Lord  Salmon's  laughter  rose 
higher. 

"  Splendid  fellow !  "  he  shouted. 

"  Lord  Salmon,  please  let  me  give  you  another  cup  of 
tea,"  pleaded  the  mellifluous  accents  of  Mrs.  Broke. 
Again  she  beamed  upon  the  eminent  financier. 

"  Certainly,  ma'am,  certainly." 

"  Joan,"  said  Lady  Bosket  to  the  niece  who  sat  opposite 
to  her,  and  who  had  not  once  taken  her  eyes  from  her  face 
during  the  last  quarter  of  an  hour,  "  have  the  goodness  to 
ring  for  my  carriage." 


THE  AVERNUS  OF  BROAD  FARCE        235 

Joan  rang  the  bell  promptly,  and  with  almost  equal 
promptitude  the  butler  appeared. 

"  Forson,  my  carriage." 

Without  taking  leave  of  anyone  except  her  hostess,  Lady 
Bosket  marched  out  of  the  room  with  a  stateliness  that  was 
rather  awe-inspiring. 

Lord  Salmon  turned  to  the  husband  of  the  gifted  lady 
with  his  laugh  subsiding  to  a  chuckle. 

"  I've  read  your  wife's  books.  Bos,  and  I've  admired 
them,  but  I  don't  think  I  should  call  her  a  great  hand  at 
conversation.  She  seems  to  have  a  habit  of  repeating 
herself.  Does  she  ever  say  anything  but,  *  Forson,  my 
carriage  ?  * " 

The  financier  again  ascended  to  a  roar. 

"  That's  your  luck,  Fishy,"  said  his  friend.  "  They  say 
you  are  the  luckiest  feller  in  England,  and  by  God  you 
are.  But  you  mustn't  mind  her.  Fishy;  it's  only  pretty 
Fanny's  way.  She  is  not  such  a  bad  old  thing  when  you 
get  to  know  her." 

With  this  amende  to  the  feelings  of  his  friend,  Lord 
Bosket  began  to  converse  with  him  in  earnest  undertones. 
They  agreed  that  it  might  be  easier  to  take  the  Thames  out 
of  its  valley  than  to  divorce  Broke  from  a  conviction  at 
which  he  had  once  arrived. 

"  He'll  do  it,  you  know,"  said  his  brother-in-law. 
"  He's  as  stubborn  as  a  colt  if  he  gets  an  idea  into  his  fat 
head.     He  don't  get  many,  but  when  they  come  they  stay." 

"  If  he  talks  at  the  meeting  as  he's  talked  to  me,"  said 
Lord  Salmon,  "  he  will  be  the  laughing-stock  of  England. 
He  must  be  stopped;  I  don't  like  to  see  a  man  like  that 
making  a  fool  of  himself." 

"  I'd  like  to  see  the  man  who  could  stop  him.  Obstinate 
feller!" 

"  A  thousand  pities,"  said  Lord  Salmon.  "  I  don't  won- 
der that  he's  coming  to  beggary.  If  a  man  won't  move 
with  the  times,  even  if  he  goes  back  in  a  direct  line  to 
Adam  and  Eve,  there  is  only  the  workhouse  for  him.  We 
are  no  respecters  of  persons  at  this  time  of  day;  that's 


236  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

what  you  swells  have  got  to  learn.  Most  of  you  have 
learnt  it,  I  will  do  you  that  justice.  You  know  you  can't 
stand  before  the  cad  with  the  money-bags.  Sooner  or 
later  you  have  got  to  get  on  to  your  knees.  Broke  is  hav- 
ing a  longer  run  than  most,  but  you  and  I  will  live  to  see 
him  brought  to  it.  He's  as  good  as  down  now,  although 
he  doesn't  know  it." 

"  He  wouldn't  own  it  if  he  did." 

"  You  are  right,  my  boy ;  but  sooner  or  later  he'll  be 
made.  When  Saul  Salmon,  as  a  very  young  man,  first 
came  out  of  the  east  and  set  up  his  plate  in  Park  Lane  the 
snobocracy  would  not  turn  their  heads  to  look  at  him. 
But  now,  my  boy,  now  he  holds  them  in  his  two  hands 
thus,  it's  another  pair  of  trousers.  How  do  you  think  I 
got  the  handle  to  my  name  I  wear  for  advertising  pur- 
poses? Simply,  my  boy,  by  taking  them  so,  in  my  grimy 
hands,  and  half  choking  the  lives  out  of  a  few  of  the 
choicest  specimens.  He  who  pays  the  piper  calls  the  tune. 
Without  my  purse  I  am  a  cad;  with  it  I  am  a  god." 

There  was  a  strange  arrogance  in  the  face  of  the  mil- 
lionaire. 

"  You  must  be  kind  to  poor  Edmund,  Fishy,"  said  his 
companion  humbly. 

"  Yes,  Bos,  I  will.  For  some  reason  I  took  to  him  from 
the  start.  I  like  the  bull-dog  in  him ;  he  don't  know  when 
he's  beat;  he's  a  man  after  my  own  heart.  I  began  life 
without  a  rag  to  my  back ;  he's  finishing  without  one.  But 
we  are  both  of  us  grit.  It  made  me  and  it  might  save  him. 
Edmund  Broke  cares  for  nothing  and  nobody;  neither 
do  I." 

"  You  are  right.  Fishy ;  the  poor  devil  is  broke,  stoney, 
done  for,  but  he's  grit  right  through.  I  love  the  feller 
myself." 

"  All  the  same,  Bos,  he  will  have  to  come  to  it,  mind 
you.  He  tears  up  my  cheque  and  throws  it  in  my  face, 
just  as  people  who  are  as  good  as  he  have  done  before 
him.  Now  they  feed  out  of  the  hand.  Edmund  Broke 
will  do  the  same  one  of  these  fine  mornings.  H  you  saw 
the  letters  I  get  from  the  Aristocracy — with  a  capital  A — 


THE  AVERNUS  OF  BROAD  FARCE        237 

from  peeresses  on  the  look-out  for  pin  money  and  peers 
wanting  pipelights,  it  would  make  you  smile.  Take  this 
morning:  five  applications  for  company  tips  from  women 
with  titles — not  all  in  the  peerage  either.  Six  invitations 
to  dinner;  three  for  Sunday  in  the  country;  and  as  for 
dances  and  parties,  if  Phoebus  Apollo  came  driving  along 
Piccadilly  in  a  golden  automobile,  he  could  not  be  more 
deuced  popular.  And  why  is  it,  do  you  think?  Would 
you  say  it  is  for  my  beaux  yeux,  my  boy?  Tchah! 
Catch  them  kissing  the  hem  of  the  garment  of  an  obese 
and  rather  elderly  Jew,  if  there  was  not  to  be  a  few 
shekels  at  the  end.  They  are  out  for  something.  Bosket, 
but  between  you  and  me  they  don't  always  get  it.  I  pick 
and  I  choose,  and  I  make  it  a  rule  to  give  to  the  deserving 
poor.  And  now  and  again,  if  it  amuses  me,  I  enjoy  the 
prerogative  of  my  race  and  exact  my  pound  of  flesh.  I 
have  one  or  two  anecdotes  of  my  dealings  with  these  fools 
and  harpies  that  would  amuse  you.  And  sometimes  when 
I  have  a  craving  for  relaxation,  I  grind  some  wretched 
devil  with  my  heel." 

"  But  not  poor  Edmund,  Fishy." 

"  No,  I've  given  my  word.  And  I  sometimes  keep  it. 
I  deplore  his  stand-off  ways  for  his  own  sake;  but  I  like 
them.  I  like  your  man  who  is  so  devilish  full  of  style 
that  he  prefers  to  be  knocked  down  and  killed  rather  than 
turn  his  stiff  neck  to  see  which  way  the  traffic's  running. 
But  there  is  no  chance  for  that  man  in  these  days.  He 
might  as  well  give  up  the  game  if  he  won't  learn  how  to 
play  it." 

"  So  I  tell  him.  I  tell  him  that  every  day  of  his  life. 
But  bless  you,  what  does  he  care?  Tell  me.  Fishy,  what 
can  a  feller  do  with  a  feller  who  is  born  eight  hundred 
years  out  of  his  time?" 

"  You  can  watch  him  rot,"  said  Lord  Salmon  succinctly. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

IN    WHICH    MR.    BURCHELL    CRIES    "  FUDGE !  " 

BROKE,  in  the  stress  of  his  affairs,  had  recourse  to 
that  sage  counsellor,  brilliant  man  of  business,  and 
past  master  of  commercial  first  principles,  Mr.  Joseph 
Breffit.  So  rapidly  was  that  eminent  person  approaching 
the  term  allotted  to  man,  and  in  such  a  remarkable  degree 
had  fortune  smiled  upon  his  labours  in  the  many  vineyards 
of  the  world  to  which  he  had  directed  his  talents,  that  he 
had  already  passed  into  an  elegant  retirement  wherein  his 
declining  years  could  seek  asylum.  He  was  now  living 
what  it  gave  him  pleasure  to  call  "  the  life  of  a  gentleman  " 
in  the  great  house  in  the  country  he  had  purchased  for  and 
had  placed  at  the  disposal  of  his  son. 

He  still  did  a  little  business  on  occasion,  but  it  was  not 
so  exacting,  not  so  all-absorbing  as  that  of  the  old  days  at 
Cuttisham.  There  were  still  a  favoured  few  among  his 
clients  whose  affairs  he  deigned  to  supervise  in  a  general 
way.  To  these  favourites  of  fortune,  foremost  among 
whom,  of  course,  was  Edmund  Broke,  the  great  man  was 
still  accessible  at  those  seasons  when  it  became  imperative 
that  they  should  arm  themselves  with  his  wisdom.  But 
he  liked  even  those  of  the  elect  to  feel  that  he  was  some- 
thing of  a  potentate  now;  that  no  longer  did  he  scurry 
hither  and  thither  over  the  shire  at  the  beck  of  this  land- 
owner and  that ;  and  that  they  could  not  depend  on  finding 
him  at  his  office  at  Cuttisham  so  many  days  in  the  week, 
year  in,  year  out,  between  the  hours  of  ten  and  four. 

Those  who  now  desired  to  confer  with  Mr.  Joseph 
Breffit  must  seek  audience  in  all  humility  at  his  seat  in  the 
county,  Tufton  Hall,  lately  in  the  occupation  of  Lord 
Algernon  Raynes.  Among  his  clients  it  had  been  often 
remarked  of  late  that  old  Joe  Breffit  had  become  a  great 

238 


MR.  BURCHELL  CRIES  "FUDGE!**        239 

man  since  he  had  taken  the  quaint  notion  to  live  at  poor 
Algy's  place.  But  however  they  might  smile  and  shrug 
their  shoulders,  and  shake  their  heads,  it  was  not  always 
possible  to  do  without  old  Joe.  A  time  seemed  to  come 
to  them  all  when  they  must  have  his  services  at  any  cost. 
"  Old  Joe  is  the  shrewdest  man  in  England,  I  don't  care 
where  you  look  for  the  others,"  had  been  the  verdict  of 
one  harassed  squire ;  and  in  the  process  of  time  that  patent 
truth  had  become  a  proverb  among  his  kind. 

To  Tufton  Hall  came  Broke  on  the  morning  following 
the  revelations  in  the  matter  of  the  Thames  Valley  Gold- 
fields  Syndicate.  Grim  and  bitter  were  his  pangs  that  he 
should  live  to  see  old  Joe  Breffit,  of  all  people  in  the 
world,  installed  in  the  room  of  poor  Algy,  in  the  house  a 
former  scion  of  a  ducal  line  had  built,  on  a  day  that  was 
hardly  legible  in  the  scroll  of  antiquity.  Broke  had  some- 
thing of  the  feelings  a  man  might  have  had  in  awakening 
from  a  sleep  of  a  hundred  years.  All  the  old  standards 
by  which  one  was  wont  to  gauge  men  and  things  had 
seemed  to  have  disappeared. 

There  was  no  end  to  Trade's  ruthless  ravages.  Noth- 
ing was  sacred  from  it.  The  fair  spots  of  earth  dedicated 
from  immemorial  time  by  usage  and  custom  to  unimpeach- 
able gentlemen  of  feudal  tastes  were  being  filched  away 
by  this  race  of  cunning  capitalists  and  greedy  manufac- 
turers. What  would  his  father  have  thought,  the  staunch 
and  four-square  old  Tory  who  twice  refused  a  peerage 
because  that  once-worthy  institution  had  fallen  into  the 
hands  of  the  middle-class,  what  would  this  fine  old  Eng- 
lishman have  thought  could  he  have  seen  motor-cars 
superseding  horseflesh,  and  such  a  man  as  old  Joe  Breffit 
taking  up  his  residence  at  Tufton  Hall ! 

When  Broke  found  himself  on  the  terrace  under  the 
shadows  of  a  gloomy  facade  that  had  won  for  the  place 
its  reputation  of  one  of  the  show  houses  of  England,  he 
felt  himself  shiver  in  the  involuntary  manner  which  in  the 
popular  mind  is  held  to  portend  that  someone  is  walking 
across  your  grave.  The  fate  of  this  sombre  pile  struck 
home.     His  own  decay  was  thrown  across  his  imagination 


240  BROKE  OF  COyENDEN 

in  the  form  of  a  sinister  parallel.  Vividly  it  foreshadowed 
the  day  when  Covenden  itself,  the  home  of  an  older  race 
than  even  that  of  Raynes,  should  fall  a  victim  to  the  time- 
spirit.  "  Upon  my  word !  "  Broke  mused,  "  it  is  sacrilege 
for  old  Breffit  to  set  his  foot  here.  We  have  'Arrys  in 
the  hunting-field;  tradesmen  at  the  covert-side;  now  we 
have  come  to  this." 

A  gorgeous  individual,  faultless  in  pose  and  appoint^- 
ment,  conducted  our  hero  across  the  tiled  hall,  embellished 
above  with  a  gallery  and  a  priceless  ceiling  by  Verrio; 
and  below  with  tapestries  rescued  from  Spain,  Louis 
Quinze  furniture,  every  piece  of  which  was  supposed  to 
have  received  the  sanction  of  La  Pompadour ;  while  upon 
the  walls  was  a  particularly  fine  set  of  ancestral  portraits 
ranging  from  Holbein  to  Watts,  with  an  occasional  Van- 
dyck,  Lely,  Kneller,  Reynolds,  Raeburn,  and  Gainsborough 
by  the  way. 

The  new  owner  of  this  magnificence  was  discovered  in 
a  spacious  morning  room.  His  nether  man  was  clad  in  a 
bran-new  pair  of  hacking  breeches  by  a  specialist  of 
Saville  Row,  but  being  at  the  moment  in  an  elegant  un- 
dress, other  details  of  his  attire  were  hardly  in  the  same 
key.  For  the  sake  of  ease  he  had  donned  neither  boots  nor 
leggings  at  this  early  hour.  Therefore,  the  parts  they 
concealed  were  exposed  to  view  in  three  sections,  consist- 
mg  in  white  drawers,  red  silk  socks,  and  carpet  slippers 
with  cunning  work  in  beads  upon  the  top.  The  white 
stock  was  virgin  in  its  purity,  but  not  so  the  shirt  and  col- 
lar ;  the  tattersall  waistcoat  was  a  thing  of  beauty,  even  if 
a  large  spot  of  grease  in  the  centre  hardly  came  within 
its  wonderful  and  fearful  scheme  of  colour,  although  like 
a  middle  tint  in  an  impressionist  landscape  to  some  eyes, 
it  might  have  seemed  an  embellishment.  As  a  set-off  to 
all  these  superlative  things  was  a  chin  that  had  not  very 
recently  known  a  razor,  while  a  ragged  smoking- jacket, 
stained  and  discoloured  all  hues  save  the  original  of  twenty 
years  before,  gave  a  further  touch  of  the  grotesque  to  an 
appearance  which  Broke  had  felt  already  did  not  require  it. 

Mr.  Breffit  was  seated  at  a  table,  and  on  it  lay  a  sheet 


MR.  BURCHELL  CRIES  "  FUDGE !  "        241 

of  note-paper  with  a  list  of  names  written  in  pencil.  Near 
the  paper  was  an  open  book,  over  which,  eye-glasses  on 
nose,  he  had  been  poring  assiduously.  It  was  a  volume 
of  Sir  Horatio  Hare's  fascinating  if  slightly  cumbersome 
work,  The  Peerage,  Baronetage,  Knightage,  and  Landed 
Gentry. 

"  Ha,  Mr.  Broke,"  he  said,  holding  out  his  hand  with 
great  cordiality  but  without  rising  from  his  chair,  "  de- 
lighted to  see  you.  This  is  indeed  a  great  pleasure.  Will 
you  take  a  little  refreshment?  Say  a  glass  of  wine  now, 
say  a  glass  of  wine  ?  " 

Broke  accepted  the  hand  and  declined  the  wine  without 
any  display  of  effusion.  Mr.  Breffit  was  frankly  disap- 
pointed. 

"  Say  a  drop  of  port,  now  ?  What  do  you  say  to  a  drop 
of  port?  I've  got  some  I  can  recommend.  Forty-seven. 
That  ought  to  be  good  enough,  even  for  you,  Mr.  Broke, 
eh?  The  old  Duke  laid  it  down,  but  I  take  it  up,  ha!  ha! 
Come  now,  just  one  glass  for  the  sake  of  old  times,  sir.'* 

This  offer  was  also  declined  with  the  same  absence  of 
effusion. 

"  Well,  well,"  said  Mr.  Breffit,  with  a  sigh,  "  I  suppose 
you  know  best,  Mr.  Broke.  It  doesn't  agree  with  every- 
body in  the  morning  before  dinner — I  mean  lunch.  It 
don't  with  me.  Or  do  you  prefer  champagne,  sir?  Say 
so  if  you  do ;  there  is  plenty  in  the  same  place  as  the  port. 
I've  got  a  nice  dry  wine  you  need  not  be  afraid  of.  In 
fact,  my  dear  sir,  if  it  comes  to  that  I  have  got  about  the 
best  cellar  in  the  county.  His  lordship  and  his  father 
before  him  knew  a  few  things  about  wine,  I  can  tell  you. 
Come,  now,  Mr.  Broke,  just  a  leetle  drop  of  '  boy '  for  old 
sake's  sake." 

Broke  remained  equally  impervious  to  the  blandish- 
ments of  champagne.  Rather  pointedly  he  stated  the 
business  that  had  brought  him  there.  But  this  morning  it 
seemed  a  really  difficult  matter  to  bring  old  Breffit  down  to 
the  mundane.  It  was  almost  as  if  he  was  a  little  overborne 
by  the  position  in  which  he  found  himself;  it  was  almost 
as  if  his  new  surroundings  were  proving  a  little  too  much 


242  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

for  him.  For  the  first  time  in  Broke' s  long  experience  of 
his  ways  he  thought  he  discerned  a  retrograde  tendency,  a 
tendency  to  insist  upon  his  own  importance.  There  was 
even  a  disposition  this  morning  to  forget  that  subtle  degree 
of  homage  that  was  wont,  as  it  were,  to  oil  the  wheels  of 
their  intercourse.  It  had  not  always  been  so  subtle  either 
for  that  matter;  there  had  been  times  when  old  Breffifs 
flummery  had  got  on  Broke's  nerves  a  little.  That,  how- 
ever, he  had  overlooked.  Breffit  had  always  been  an  emi- 
nently well-meaning  man.  But  the  suggestion  of  familiar- 
ity, of  off  handedness  that  he  displayed  this  morning,  jarred 
a  little  on  those  pontifical  nerves.  A  devoutly  religious 
nature  may  occasionally  deplore  the  presence  of  too  much 
incense,  but  too  little  cuts  it  to  the  heart. 

"  What  do  you  think  of  my  little  place?  "  said  Mr.  Bref- 
fit, almost  before  Broke  had  had  time  to  furnish  his 
succinct  account  of  the  threatened  disaster  to  the  Thames 
Valley  Goldfields  Syndicate.  "  Not  a  bad  place,  is  it, 
sir?" 

Broke  was  not  able  to  show  any  particular  enthusiasm 
for  the  little  place.  The  pride  of  ownership  which  swelled 
the  voice  of  old  Breffit  caused  him  somewhat  comically  to 
cock  his  eye  at  that  personage,  and  to  stroke  his  chin 
thoughtfully. 

"  There  is  everything  here,  you  know,"  said  the  new 
owner.  "  It  would  surprise  you,  it  would  indeed,  to  see 
the  number  of  people  who  come  'ere  from  all  parts  of  the 
world  and  from  America  especially,  to  look  at  what  we've 
got.  We  set  certain  days  apart  you  know,  on  which  to 
throw  the  'ouse  and  grounds  open  to  the  public.  It  is  very 
inconvenient,  you  know,  sometimes  to  be  mistaken  for  the 
butler,  and  now  and  then  to  get  a  tip;  or  when  you  are 
sitting  at  dinner — I  mean  lunch — to  see  them  pressing 
their  noses  against  the  windows:  it  gives  you  a  kind  of 
feeling  that  they  'ave  come  to  watch  the  lions  feed.  But, 
after  all,  these  are  part  of  our  responsibilities.  Noblesse 
oblige — I  daresay  you  'ave  felt  the  same  thing  yourself." 

"  Humph !  "  said  Broke. 

"  I  suppose  it  is  only  right.     We  ought  not  to  be  selfish 


MR.  BURCHELL  CRIES  "  FUDGE !  "         243 

in  these  matters.  We  ought  to  do  what  we  can  to  elevate 
the  masses.  If  it  educates  them  and  gives  them  'igher 
thoughts  to  look  at  old  oil  paintings,  I  am  not  the  one  to 
say  them  nay.  '  Let  them  all  come '  is  my  motto.  But  I 
feel  a  great  responsibility,  Mr.  Broke,  all  the  same.  You 
see,  Lord  Algernon  was — you  will,  ahem!  pardon  my 
frankness,  but  it  has  always  been  my  rule  to  speak  out — 
Lord  Algernon  was  not  at  all  particular.  He  'ung  up  pic- 
tures of  nude  figures  of  both  sexes." 

"  Humph ! " 

"  I  understand  one  of  the  ceilings  is  by  Marie  Corelli — 
the  one  with  the  little  flying  angels  on  it.  Very  pure  and 
'igh-minded,  I  call  it,  considering  the  subject — '  Beauty  in 
Distress  ' — and  '  Beauty '  is  so  nicely  dressed  that  it  ought 
to  be  a  fine  moral  lesson  to  some  other  artists  I  could 
name.  I  call  that  ceiling  'armless,  sir.  Very  moral  and 
elevating.  But  personally  the  landscapes  appeal  to  me 
most.  There's  a  genuine  Claude  Duval.  And  that  little 
thing  in  a  gilt  frame  on  the  right  hand  as  you  enter  is  sup- 
posed to  be  a  genuine  Theodore  Watts  Dunton." 

"  Humph ! " 

"  Then,  sir,  the  furniture  is  worthy  of  attention.  There 
is  a  Chippendale  cabinet  and  a  Sheraton  sideboard  with 
poker  work  inlaid ;  the  chairs  are  mostly  Paul  Very-uneasy 
and  Lewis  Carroll.  The  piano  in  the  blue  drawing-room 
is  an  upright  Stradivarius  on  which  Ole  Bull  had  the 
honour  of  playing  *  Home  Sweet  Home '  before  her  Maj- 
esty at  Cowes." 

"Humph!" 

**  The  grounds  are  worthy  of  attention  also.  There  are 
several  trees  planted  by  the  late  Prince  Consort,  also  one 
or  two  cut  down  by  the  late  Mr.  Gladstone." 

"  Humph ! " 

"  There  are  all  things  and  everything.  In  the  cabinet 
in  the  yellow  room  among  the  curios  there  is  the  air- 
cushion  that  was  kept  for  the  Prince  Regent  to  sit  on 
when  he  had  the  gout.  There  is  the  identical  penny  doll 
the  Prince  of  Wales  wore  in  his  hat  when  he  went  to  the 
Derby  in  '6y.     There  is  Queen  Anne's  favourite  snuff- 


244  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

box;  and  a  strip  of  the  shift  in  which  Mother  Brownrigg 
was  executed.  There  are  the  shoes  of  a  Derby  winner 
bred  and  owned  by  Lord  Algernon's  father,  the  late  Duke ; 
and  there  are  buttons  from  the  pantaloons  worn  by  old 
Q  and  Lord  George  Bentinck  on  the  memorable  occasion. 
In  fact,  Mr.  Broke,  there  are  a  thousand  and  one  things 
too  numerous  to  refer  to.  I  shall  be  very  happy,  sir, 
personally  to  take  you  on  a  tour  of  the  house  and  grounds 
like  I  do  parties  of  excursionists." 

"Humph!" 

"  But,  you  know,  Mr.  Broke " — ^the  old  man's  voice 
seemed  to  grow  pregnant  with  mystery — "  I  have  always 
maintained  it  is  not  manners  that  maketh  man  so  much  as 
his  surroundings.  To-morrow  we  start  our  entertaining. 
There  is  a  lot  of  real  swells  coming  here,  friends  of  my 
son's.  They  would  never  have  thought  of  coming  to  my 
hole-and-corner  little  house  at  Cuttisham,  but  here,  sir, 
you  see,  it's  different.  They  are  all  the  real  thing,  sir, 
every  one ;  you  would  not  be  ashamed  to  meet  them  your- 
self. I  wish  you  would  name  a  day  on  which  you  could 
come  over  and  dine  with  us.  And  we  should  be  delighted 
to  put  you  up;  no  end  of  room,  you  know.  I  have  just 
been  looking  out  who  these  friends  of  his  are;  all  their 
names  are  in  Debrett,  so  they  are  perfectly  safe." 

"Humph!" 

"  Not  one  is  lower  in  rank  than  a  baronet ;  but  of  course, 
men  like  you  and  I,  Mr.  Broke,  appreciate  the  real  value  of 
'aving  a  'andle  to  one's  name.  It  is  not  worth  anything, 
strictly  speaking,  but  the  world  has  yet  to  find  that  out; 
and  when  all  is  said,  it  does  give  you  a  feeling  of  security 
that  whatever  they  may  say  or  whatever  they  may  do  has 
the  sanction,  as  it  were,  of  their  social  position.  I  think 
it  is  good  for  my  son  to  choose  his  acquaintances  from 
among  the  'ighest  in  the  land.  A  man  is  known  by  the 
company  he  keeps.  I  am  thankful  to  say  my  son  has  al- 
ready found  out  the  value  of  that  adage." 

"  Humph ! " 

"  You  might  say  that  we  have  coming  to-morrow  the 
creme  de  la  creme,  the  real  Vere  de  Vere,  as  it  were. 


MR.  BURCHELL  CRIES  "FUDGE!"        245 

There  is  young  Stuffe,  the  eldest  son  of  Lord  Wool-Sacke, 
a  fine  example  of  pecuniary  reward  overtaking  a  humane 
and  high-minded  judge  who  never  allowed  wealth  and 
position  to  interfere  with  his  unfailing  courtesy.  There 
is  also  the  eldest  son  of  Lord  Beeston.  His  father  was 
ennobled  for  building  a  coffee  tavern,  in  which  a  royal 
princess  drank  the  first  mug.  Then  there  is  young  Tread- 
well,  son  of  Lord  Kidderminster — carpets  you  know. 
Don't  you  think,  Mr.  Broke,  my  son  has  done  well  to  col- 
lect such  a  very  desirable  set  of  young  men  ?  " 

"Humph!" 

At  this  point  the  proud  father  stopped.  His  volubility, 
touched  with  an  intense  excitement  which  had  provoked 
a  few  liberties  with  his  mother  tongue,  came  suddenly  to 
an  end  just  as  Broke  had  been  driven  by  despair  to  the 
conclusion  that  it  was  never  going  to  end  at  all.  Mr. 
Breffit  pulled  himself  up  by  a  violent  effort.  He  coughed 
in  an  uneasy  fashion,  and  began  to  wriggle  in  his  chair 
without  any  visible  cause  for  such  a  proceeding.  Broke 
regarded  him  with  a  stolid  gravity.  Now  he  was  here  he 
would  hear  the  fellow  out  to  the  bitter  end!  After  all, 
here  was  an  illuminating  sidelight  on  human  nature.  One 
hardly  realized  into  what  fantastic  shapes  the  aspirations 
that  might  be  said  to  be  common  to  all  men  could  be 
twisted  by  uneducated  minds.  Poor  Breffit's  astounding 
revelation  of  himself  was  not  without  value.  It  would 
be  instructive  to  hear  the  fellow  out. 

"  You  must  pardon  me,  Mr.  Broke,"  said  the  Old  man 
in  a  voice  that  had  now  dropped  to  almost  a  whisper, 
"  but  I  think  the  time  is  now  come  when,  without  impro- 
priety, I  can  speak  on  a  subject  that  has  been  in  my  mind 
for  some  little  time  past.  Of  course,  sir,  speaking  as  one 
man  of  the  world  to  another,  you  will  understand  almost 
without  my  calling  attention  to  the  fact,  that  in  these  days 
every  tub  is  allowed  to  stand  on  its  own  bottom,  as  it  were, 
and  that  it  is  every  man  for  himself." 

"Humph!" 

"  I  don't  think  that  quite  expresses  what  I  mean,  sir. 
What  I  meant  to  say  is  this :  when  a  man  gets  to  my  time 


246  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

of  life,  and  that  life  has  been  as  successful  as  mine  has 
been — I  think  I  may  make  that  admission  to  you,  sir, 
without  being  considered  boastful — he  may  see  things  in 
a  different  aspect  from  what  he  saw  them  when  he  was 
younger  and  not  quite  so  well  off." 

"Humph!" 

"  You  see,  there  is  this  son  of  mine,  sir.  He  has  had 
the  best  upbringing  that  a  young  man  can  'ave ;  he  mixes 
with  the  'ighly  placed;  he  enjoys  all  the  advantages  of 
wealth ;  not  to  mention  the  minor  blessings  of  'ealth  and  a 
sound  constitution.  And  it  has  become  a  pet  scheme  of 
mine,  Mr.  Broke,  my  one  remaining  ambition,  you  might 
say,  that  before  I  die  I  shall  see  this  boy  of  mine  settled 
in  life  with  a  wife  whose  antecedents  are  unimpeachable 
and — er — to  be  quite  frank  with  you,  sir,  who  is  capable  of 
giving  him  a  lift  socially.  It  may  seem  a  wild  scheme  to 
you,  sir,  but  before  I  die  I  should  like  to  see  my  son  in  a 
fair  way  to — er — found  a  family." 

"Humph!" 

The  old  man  was  exceeding  all  expectation. 

"  It  may  sound  a  bit  inflated  and  presumptuous  to  you, 
I  know,  Mr.  Broke;  but  you  must  not  forget  that  every- 
body *as  to  'ave  a  beginning.  If  I  may  say  it  without 
giving  offence,  sir,  even  the  family  of  Broke  'ad  to  'ave 
a  beginning.  And  what  I  ask  myself  is  this :  why  should 
not  I,  old  Joe  Breffit,  now  that  I  'ave  the  ways  and  the 
means,  all  come  by  honestly,  mind  you,  and  in  the  sweat 
of  my  brow  as  it  were,  why  should  not  I  begin  like  any- 
body else?  When  some  of  the  fathers  and  the  grand- 
fathers of  the  young  men  who  are  coming  to-morrow  be- 
gan life,  sir,  they  were  'ardly  better  than  I  am  myself. 
But  look  at  them  now.  They  are  the  creme  de  la  crbme, 
the  real  Vere  de  Vere.  And  I  have  lately  come  to  ask 
myself,  why  in  the  course  of  time  and  the  fullness,  the 
name  of  Breffit  should  not  rank  as  'igh  as  does  theirs 
to-day?" 

"Humph!" 

"  Those  are  my  feelings,  Mr.  Broke.  And  I  hope  you 
will  be  patient  with  me,  and  not  think  I  am  trespassing — 


MR.  BURCHELL  CRIES  "FUDGE!"         247 

trespassing  unduly  upon  your  valuable  time,  because  I  have 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  you,  sir,  are  the  man  before  all 
others  who  is  in  a  position  to  help  me." 

"  Humph ! " 

The  surprised  but  not  flattered  Broke  knitted  his  brows 
into  a  kind  of  fierce  perplexity. 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,  Breffit,  but  I  am  afraid  I  don't 
understand  what  you  are  driving  at." 

"  No,  sir,  I  thought  you  might  not.  I  will  try  to  make 
myself  a  little  more  clear.  You  see,  it  is  like  this,  Mr. 
Broke — I  hope  you  will  not  think  I  am  exceeding  the 
bounds  of  good  taste  to  mention  a  small  matter  of  this 
kind — but  speaking  as  one  business  man  to  another,  are 
you  aware  that  a  few  months  ago  Mrs.  Broke  did  me  the 
honour  to  accept  a  loan  to  the  extent  of  some  two  thou- 
sand pounds.  The  matter  is  almost  too  trivial  to  mention. 
It  was  just  in  the  ordinary  way  of  business,  you  know; 
she  wanted  it,  I  believe,  for  some  little  private  specula- 
tion, which  I  am^  sorry  to  say  did  not  come  off.  In  any 
case  she  borrowed  it,  sir;  and  as  she  has  since  told  me 
that  there  is  no  immediate  prospect  of  her  being  able  to 
repay  it,  I  feel,  with  great  diffidence,  you  understand,  sir, 
that  I  may  be  pardoned  if  I  turn  to  you  for  a  helping 
hand  in  this  little  matter  that  is  so  near  my  heart.  Wheels 
within  wheels,  you  know,  sir,  as  the  saying  is." 

Broke  said  "  Humph  "  no  more.  His  face  assumed  the 
startled  expression  which  several  times  had  appeared  on 
it  of  late;  every  line  in  his  figure  denoted  alarm. 

"  Impossible.     She  would  not  be  such  a  fool." 

Mr.  Breffit  smiled  a  far-off  smile. 

"  I  hold  her  I.O.U.  I  can  easily  produce  it,  sir,  if  you 
wish  to  see  it." 

Broke  waved  his  hand  petulantly;  but  half  a  groan 
escaped  him.  His  unbelief  was  not  so  much  a  matter  of 
incredulity  as  of  disinclination. 

"  What — ah — do  you — ah — propose  to  do  ?  " 

"  I  propose  to  do  nothing,  sir,  of  course.  But  if  I  may, 
I  would  like  to  make  a  suggestion.  The  scheme  I  would 
like  to  be  allowed  to  propound  would,  I  am  sure,  be  to 


248  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

our  common  advantage.  But  first,  sir,  I  must  have  your 
permission  to  speak  out  just  what  is  in  my  mind." 

"  You  have  it,"  said  Broke  shortly. 

"  You  will  undertake  not  to  be — er — offended  by  it, 
sir?" 

"  Of  course." 

Broke  gave  a  grim  eye  to  his  agent.  For  the  first  time 
the  idea  dawned  upon  him,  in  all  its  completeness,  what  a 
cunning  schemer  this  man  Breffit  really  was.  The  supple 
and  servile  adviser  of  twenty  years,  in  many  ways  the 
friend,  was  now  about  to  issue  forth  in  his  true  character 
of  the  Jew-like  usurer.  He  could  afford  to  snap  his  fin- 
gers in  his  face  now,  he  the  man  of  wealth,  to  the  client 
brought  to  beggary.  He  was  about  to  grind  him,  no 
doubt. 

"  Well,  sir,  what  I  'ave  in  my  mind  is  this,"  said  the  old 
man,  with  the  same  circumlocution,  the  same  odd  nervous- 
ness of  manner  that  Broke  had  noticed  in  him  from  the 
beginning  of  this  interview.  "  Blood  without  money  don't 
count  for  much  nowadays,  does  it,  sir?  And  money  likes 
to  'ave  blood  to  back  it  when  it  can  get  it,  does  it  not, 
sir?  Now,  why  should  not  you  and  I,  who  I  might  say  are 
typical  of  the  two  sides,  if  you  will  pardon  the  freedom, 
enter  into  a  little  arrangement  for  our  mutual  benefit  ?  " 

"  Why  not  ?  "  said  Broke  the  obtuse. 

"  I  am  glad  to  hear  you  say  that,  sir,  I  am  indeed !  " 
said  Mr.  Brefifit,  with  an  air  of  relief.  "  I  felt  sure,  sir, 
you  would  see  it  in  that  light." 

"  What  is  your  little  arrangement,  Breffit  ?  " 

"  Well — er — you  see,  sir,  I — er — want  a  wife  for  my 
son." 

"  In  the  circumstances  that  does  not  strike  one  as  un- 
natural." 

"  I  want  you  to  help  me,  Mr.  Broke." 

"  I — ah — have  no  qualifications  as  far  as  I  am  aware  to 
be  a  matrimonial  agent." 

"  You  have  daughters,  sir." 

"  Six." 

They  looked  at  one  another.     Broke  looked  at  Breffit 


MR.  BURCHELL  CRIES  "FUDGE!"        249 

with  the  candour  and  self-possession  of  sheer  obtuseness. 
For  the  life  of  him  he  could  not  see  what  the  fellow  was 
driving  at!  Breffit  looked  at  Broke  with  a  weary,  rather 
anxious  expression.  The  power  of  delicate  suggestion 
could  no  farther  go.  The  hint  was  as  broad  as  decency 
would  well  permit,  yet  the  great  man  either  could  not  or 
would  not  see  it. 

For  once  even  Mr.  Breffit  was  at  a  loss.  He  had  an 
uneasy  feeling  that  this  matter  was  a  little  outside  his 
milieu.  A  purely  business  transaction,  the  recovery  of  a 
debt,  the  terms  of  a  tenancy,  the  conveyance  of  a  lease, 
and  he  was  prepared  to  revel  in  the  facility  and  the  felicity 
of  his  language.  But  those  gifts  of  expression  did  not 
help  him  here.  Delicacy  was  called  for,  yet  this  man 
was  as  dense  as  a  wall. 

"  Don't  you  take  me,  sir  ?  *'  he  said  at  last  in  desperation. 

"  I  beg  pardon,  Breffit." 

"Don't  you  understand  me,  sir?" 

"  I  beg  pardon,"  repeated  Broke  gravely. 

Mr.  Breffit  was  defeated.  Surely  it  was  hardly  neces- 
sary to  say  in  just  so  many  words  what  was  in  one's  mind. 
Was  it  usual  to  resort  to  such  an  extreme  verbal  precision 
in  affairs  of  this  peculiarly  delicate  kind?  It  was  his  first 
experience  of  them  to  be  sure,  but  somehow  he  felt  that 
a  little  margin  should  be  permitted. 

"  You  have  daughters,  sir." 

"  Six." 

"  And  I  have  a  son,  sir." 

"  So  I  understand." 

"  Well,  now,  sir,  do  I  not — er — ^begin  to  make  myself 
clear?" 

In  his  anxiety  Mr.  Breffit  leaned  forward  with  his  hands 
on  his  knees. 

"  You  spoke  of  a  scheme,  just  now,"  said  Broke  pa- 
tiently. 

"  That  is  my  scheme,  sir,"  said  Mr.  Breffit  in  a  sudden 
burst  of  confidence. 

"  You  speak  in  riddles,  Breffit.  I — ah — cannot  make 
you  out.     I  do  not  see  what  your  son  has  got  to  do  with  it. 


250  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

Do  you — ah — wish  me  to  understand  that  Mrs.  Broke 
borrowed  this  money  of  himf  If  that  is  the  case,  why — 
ah — not  say  so  in  as  many  words  ?  " 

Mr.  Breffit  ran  his  fingers  through  his  sparse  hair. 
How  was  it  possible  to  be  deHcate  with  a  man  of  this 
kind! 

'*  It  is  not  a  question  of  the  money,  sir,  altogether." 

"If  it  is  not  a  question  of  the  money,  I  hardly  know 
what  you  are  talking  about,  Breffit,"  said  Broke,  becoming 
so  bewildered  that  he  was  getting  a  little  angry  also.  "  Of 
course,  you  may  depend  upon  it  that  I  shall  take  the  first 
opportunity  of — ah — discharging  the — ah — obligation  Mrs. 
Broke  is  under  to  you.  I  hope  there  will  be  enough  left 
over  from  the  lease  of  No.  3  Broke  Street,  to  clear  off 
that.  In  the  course  of  a  week  or  two,  Breffit,  I — ah — trust 
you  will  be  repaid." 

"  Of  course,  sir — yes,  yes — of  course.  But — er — that 
is  not  exactly  what  I  mean.  Really — er — that  has  little  or 
nothing  to  do  with  it." 

"  Breffit,  I  cannot  understand  you.  What  else  have  we 
been  talking  about?  I  certainly  understood  you  to  be 
propounding  a  scheme  by  which  I — ah — could  pay  off  the 
debt  in  a  manner  convenient  to  us  both.  You  have  not 
made  it  very  clear,  but  I — ah — don't  doubt  it  is  excellent. 
Your  schemes  in  the  way  of  business  are  generally  excel- 
lent." 

"  They  are,  I  hope  and  trust,  sir.  But  if  you  will  par- 
don my  saying  it,  I  think  you  are  labouring  under  a  mis- 
apprehension. It  is  not  a  paltry  little  matter  of  a  few 
hundreds  of  pounds  to  which  I  am  referring  now.  We 
will  leave  that  out  of  the  question  altogether.  You  have 
six  daughters,  and — er — I  have  one  son,  sir;  and  my  son, 
sir,  speaking  plainly,  is  pretty  well  off  at  the  present  time 
and  has  this  place  in  which  to  live.  In  confidence,  Mr. 
Broke,  I  think  it  is  only  right  to  tell  you  that  I  have  made 
over  this  house  to  him  in  my  own  lifetime,  and,  moreover, 
I  allow  him  twenty  thousand  a  year  upon  which  to  main- 
tain it.  And  I  may  say  this  is  no  more  than  half  of  the 
fortune  which  will  come  to  him  at  my  decease.     Still, 


MR.  BURCHELL  CRIES  "FUDGE!"         251 

what  he  has  already  should  suffice  for  him  to  marry  upon 
and  lead  the  life  of  a  gentleman.  And  should  his  wife 
object  to  my  presence  in  this  house,  I  being  a  simple  and 
homely  man,  sir,  and  have  always  been  so,  like  my  father 
before  me,  am  quite  prepared  to  go  back  to  the  little  house 
at  Cuttisham  where  I  have  lived  for  forty  years." 

With  an  impatience  that  was  no  longer  to  be  restrained 
Broke  rose  from  his  chair.  Old  Breffit  was  so  mysterious, 
so  unintelligible  that  one  would  almost  think  his  mind  was 
giving  way.  Certainly  he  was  beginning  to  show  many 
signs  of  age.  This  was  not  the  Breffit  of  the  old  days, 
whom  he  had  been  wont  to  regard  as  his  right  hand.  This 
was  not  the  far-seeing  and  astute  man  of  business  who, 
confining  himself  wholly  to  the  affairs  of  his  clients,  had 
the  knack  of  expressing  himself  in  the  fewest  possible 
words.  This  was  a  new  kind  of  Breffit  altogether:  a  halt- 
ing, faltering,  fumbling,  posing,  nervously  autobiographi- 
cal Breffit;  an  uneasy  aspiring,  much-too-familiar  Breffit 
who  gave  himself  airs.  There  could  be  no  doubt  that 
wealth  was  a  curse  to  those  who  had  not  been  bred  to  its 
enjoyment. 

Broke  could  endure  this  farce  no  longer.  He  took  up 
his  hat  and  tapped  his  box  cloth  leggings  with  the  handle 
of  his  riding  crop. 

"  Good  morning,  Breffit.'' 

His  agent  lifted  a  perspiring  face  up  to  him  in  the  stress 
of  a  last  appeal. 

"  Surely,  sir,  you  do  understand  me  ?  " 

"  Confound  it  all,  my  dear  fellow,  what  is  there  to  un- 
derstand ?  " 

"  That  I  want  my  son  to  marry  one  of  your  daughters 
— I  don't  care  which,"  Mr.  Breffit  blurted  out  with  the 
sudden  and  dramatic  brevity  of  sheer  desperation. 

Broke  stood  a  minute  in  silence,  but  with  mouth  open 
wide  and  a  face  as  purple  as  Mr.  Breffit's  own.  Suddenly, 
and  still  without  uttering  a  word,  he  crammed  his  hat  on 
his  head,  swung  upon  his  heel,  and  stalked  out  of  the 
house  so  furiously  that  he  nearly  knocked  down  and 
trampled  upon  a  very  serious  footman  in  the  process. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

IPHIGENIA 

BROKE  rode  two  miles  at  a  brisk  canter.  And  then, 
all  of  a  sudden,  and  for  no  visible  reason,  he  reined 
in  his  horse  sharply  and  burst  into  a  guffaw  of  laughter. 
The  quality  of  his  mirth  was  as  strange  as  its  manner. 
It  had  the  hollowness  of  that  which  a  ghost  might  shake 
out  of  its  thin  sides,  if  confronted  with  its  own  reflection 
in  a  mirror  in  the  middle  of  the  night.  There  was  no 
apparent  reason  why  at  such  a  moment  he  should  pause 
for  amusement's  sake,  let  alone  to  make  it  vocal ;  and  the 
absence  of  motive  lent  a  very  irrational  air  to  the  proceed- 
ing. 

It  was  not  until  the  evening  of  that  day  that  he  could 
screw  up  his  resolution  to  the  point  of  mentioning  to  his 
wife  the  painful  matter  of  her  borrowing  two  thousand 
pounds  from  Mr.  Brefht.  The  other  consequences — the 
outcome,  he  supposed,  of  that  rash  act — he  could  not  lay 
before  himself.  Events  had  been  moving  too  fast  for  him 
lately.  His  powerfully  balanced  and  superbly  unemotional 
mental  system  was  in  danger  of  being  shaken  to  its  base 
if  this  sort  of  thing  continued.  There  was  only  a  numb 
ache  in  that  sensitive  portion  of  his  being  which  rejoiced 
a  fortnight  ago  in  the  possession  of  a  son.  And  a  sort 
of  hiatus  was  overspreading  that  equally  sensitive  area 
that  was  dedicated  to  his  great  integrity.  That  Salmon 
business  was  a  facer ;  but  worse  a  hundred  times,  because 
of  the  hint  of  treachery  implied  in  it,  was  this  business  of 
his  wife  stooping  to  borrow  money  behind  his  back,  with 
but  a  faint  prospect  of  repaying  it.  As  for  the  use  old 
Breffit  had  proposed  to  himself  to  make  of  it,  that  was 
hardly  a  theme  for  serious  minds.  It  belonged  to  the 
region  of  opera  bouffe. 

252 


IPHIGENIA  253 

He  was  shocked  by  his  wife's  lightness  of  tone  when  at 
last  with  many  hums  and  haws  he  brought  himself  to 
refer  to  the  subject.  The  borrowing  of  the  money  she 
admitted  in  as  many  words.  She  had  been  tempted  to 
speculate  on  the  Stock  Exchange  in  the  hope  of  doubling 
the  sum ;  she  had  not  been  successful ;  and  there  the  thing 
was — such  was  her  habit  of  philosophy.  She  was  per- 
fectly calm  about  it ;  not  at  all  inclined  to  mingle  her  tears 
with  the  milk  she  had  spilt. 

"  With  a  bit  of  luck  I  could  have  returned  the  money 
and  have  been  the  richer  by  two  thousand  pounds,  and 
no  one  would  have  been  any  the  wiser.  I  have  done  it 
before ;  but  we  are  dead  out  of  luck  this  year." 

"  I — ah — don't  like  to  hear  you  talk  like  that,  Jane.  ^  It 
is  as  though  you — ah — hardly  appreciate  the  principle  in- 
volved.    You  should  have  first  consulted  me." 

Her  sense  of  humour  was  too  keen  to  enable  her  to  keep 
the  light  of  it  out  of  her  eyes. 

"  I  am  afraid  you — ah — treat  the  matter  too  lightly. 
You — ah — should  never  have  done  a  thing  like  that  with- 
out my  sanction." 

"  I  hardly  concede  your  right,  my  dear  Edmund,  to 
intervene  in  my  purely  private  affairs." 

"  I — ah — think  you  will  find  that  the  law  does." 

"  Has  it  never  occurred  to  you,  my  dear,  that  to  be  per- 
fectly literal  with  the  law  of  England  is  to  be  out  of 
date?" 

**  I — ah — don't  go  into  fine  points.  The  fact  should 
suffice  that  we  are  one  in  the  sight  of  the  law." 

"  Very  well,  Edmund,  I  grant  it ;  but  I  still  arrogate  to 
myself  the  right  to  forget  the  fact  occasionally.  Does 
the  virtuous  Mr.  Breffit  propose  to  adopt  the  role  of 
Shylock?" 

"  He  does." 

"  He  proposes  to  sell  us  up  ?  " 

"  No,  he — ah — wants  his  pound  of  flesh  more  literally." 

Broke  again  suddenly  broke  forth  into  the  guffaw  he 
had  checked  his  horse  to  employ.  It  burst  out  of  him  in 
just  the  same  irrational  fashion  as  in  the  country  lane. 


254  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

His  wife  was  startled  by  it.  She  then  noted  that  his 
eyes  were  slightly  bloodshot.  In  his  face  she  saw  the 
expression  of  grey  weariness  that  had  been  first  seen  there 
so  recently. 

"  We  put  ourselves  in  the  power,"  he  said,  "  of  men  like 
these  and  they  do  not  hesitate  to  push  their  advantages 
home.  I  have  had  such  an  instance  of  the  man's  effront- 
ery as  you  will  hardly  believe." 

Mrs.  Broke  waited  with  a  calm  foreknowledge  of  what 
was  coming.     For  accuracy  of  guessing  she  was  famous. 

"  I — ah — don't  know  that  it  is  worth  while  to  tell  you." 

"  You  will  be  wise  if  you  do." 

"  Very  well.  You  may  know  that  Breffit  has  put  his 
son  in  Algernon's  place  with  twenty  thousafid  a  year. 
Well,  this  morning  he  was  kind  enough  to  suggest  that  one 
of  our  girls — he — ah — says  he  don't  mind  which — should 
marry  the  fellow." 

Again  the  laugh  rang  hollow.  His  wife  looked  at  him 
with  a  tenderly  quizzical  expression. 

"  I  never  guessed  what  an  old  ruffian  he  was  until  I  saw 
him  this  morning  in  poor  Algy's  house.  He  is  completely 
changed.  He  is  like  the  rest  of  his  tribe:  money  poisons 
him.  He  was — ah — good  enough  to  put  me  on  an  equality 
with  himself.  Noblesse  oblige,  you  know,  Mr.  Broke.  I 
could  hardly  stand  it;  I — ah — nearly  laughed  in  his  face." 

He  passed  his  hands  through  his  hair  wearily. 

"  And  how  did  you  answer  him,  Edmund  ?  " 

"What  could  I?     I— ah— I— ah— I  boltedr 

"  I  gather  that  you  did  not  err  on  the  side  of  polite- 
ness, my  dear." 

"  The  fellow  got  as  much  as  he  deserved — more !  " 

"  Twenty  thousand  a  year,"  she  repeated  wistfully. 

"  It  makes  it  no  better — worse  if  anything.  It's  a 
bribe." 

"  There  is  one  phase  of  this  matter,  Edmund,  of  which 
you  force  me  to  remind  you.  A  recent  event  has  ruined 
us." 

"  In  a  sense  I — ah — suppose  it  has." 

"  We  must  leave  Covenden,  or  consent  to  be  sold  up." 


IPHIGENIA  255 

"  Surely  we  cannot  be  so  far  gone  as  that." 

His  voice  had  changed. 

"  You  will  find  it  to  be  as  I  say.  And  I  want  you  to 
bear  in  mind  that  Mr.  Breffit  is  our  largest  creditor." 

"  But  you  forget  that  we  are  selling  the  lease  of  No.  3. 
Surely  that  will  help  us  to  hold  on  a  bit." 

"  Edmund,  do  not  deceive  yourself.  We  are  compro- 
mised far  more  deeply  than  I  think  you  realize.  Mr.  Bref- 
fit's  purse  and  his  goodwill  have  been  propping  us  up  for 
several  years.  You  are  not  so  closely  in  touch  with  our 
affairs  as  I  am;  we  are  much  farther  gone  than  you 
think.  For  the  last  two  years  Mr.  Breffit  has  only  had 
to  say  the  word  for  Covenden  to  be  sold  over  our  heads." 

"  Why  has  the  fellow  not  said  it,  then  ?  " 

"  I  will  give  you  no  more  than  two  reasons.  The  first 
was  his  friendship  for  us  and  our  hopes  of  Billy.  The 
second  I  will  leave  you  to  guess  for  yourself." 

"  Impossible ;  I — ah — refuse  to  believe  it.  The  fellow 
may  be  cunning,  but  he  cannot  have  had  the — ah — folly, 
the — ah — effrontery  to  play  such  a  game  as  that.  The 
man  must  be  mad." 

"  Not  mad,  Edmund.  If  madness  there  is  in  the  matter 
it  lies  elsewhere.  The  man  simply  belongs  to  the  age  in 
which  he  lives." 

"  Faugh !     You  disgust  me." 

"  Again,  Edmund,  for  the  thousandth  time  it  is  my  dis- 
agreeable duty  to  remind  you  that  this  is  not  the  age  of 
the  Plantagenets.  People  like  you  are  as  obsolete  as  the 
feudal  baron.  We  are  democrats  all,  living  in  the  golden 
age  of  the  people.  We  must  be  prepared  to  offer  up  our 
Iphigenia  on  their  altars." 

"  I  don't  know  how  you  can  talk  so,"  said  Broke 
hoarsely.     "  It's  blasphemous." 

"  We  are  face  to  face  with  the  bitter  truth.  When 
Mr.  Breffit  made  that  suggestion  this  morning  he  showed 
his  hand.  He  could  have  added,  and  probably  would  have 
done  so  had  you  waited  to  hear,  *  Refuse  me  this  and  I 
make  an  end  of  you ! '  " 

"You  think  that!" 


256  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  I  am  perfectly  convinced  of  it." 

Broke's  chest  sank ;  speech  seemed  to  fail  him.  He  was 
compelled  to  take  what  his  wife  said  for  granted.  It  had 
long  been  her  privilege  to  navigate  the  wretched  vessel 
through  these  vast  and  deep  seas  of  an  infinite  complex- 
ity. The  requisite  patience  and  subtlety  were  beyond  him. 
Thus  when  the  cold  assurance  fell  from  her  lips  he  ac- 
cepted it  with  a  faith  that  was  unquestioning.  The  blow 
shook  him  to  the  roots. 

"  I  would  suggest  Delia." 

His  wife's  brevity  was  so  pregnant  that  he  was  startled 
rather  painfully. 

He  shaped  a  word  with  his  lips.  So  shaken  was  he  that 
for  the  moment  he  had  lost  the  power  of  speech. 

"  The  matter  is  one  of  life  or  death.  Shylock  insists  on 
his  pound  of  flesh.  He  has  only  to  say  the  word  and  we 
are  houseless  and  homeless.  Covenden  will  probably  be- 
come a  shooting-box  for  his  son." 

Implacably  she  watched  the  barb  sink.  The  capacity  to 
act  purely  from  considerations  of  expedience  was  standing 
her  in  good  stead  at  this  moment.  She  was  designedly 
ruthless ;  half  measures  would  be  fatal.  His  pride  must  be 
nailed  to  the  tree. 

"I  suggest  Delia." 

"  You  don't  know  what  you  are  saying,  woman." 

"  You  have  six  girls,  but  only  one  Covenden." 

"  Ugh !  shocking  young  cad." 

"  So  I  believe.     The  heathen  deities  are  not  nice." 

"  I  cannot  do  it,  I  will  not  do  it.     The  idea  revolts  me." 

Broke  rose  from  his  chair  and  strode  about  the  room. 
She  watched  his  grotesque  figure  as  it  lurched  up  and 
down  the  carpet.     There  was  a  wan  smile  on  her  lips. 

"Why  Delia?" 

He  stopped  suddenly  and  faced  her  fiercely  as  he  asked 
the  question. 

"  She  is  the  youngest." 

"  That  is  not  a  reason.  Or  if  it  is  a  reason  it  points  the 
other  way." 

"  She  is  not  quite  so  dependable  as  the  others." 


IPHIGENIA  257 

"  How  ?    What  do  you  mean  ?  " 

A  fortnight  ago  he  would  not  have  brought  himself  to 
put  such  a  question.  But  a  miracle  has  only  to  happen  to 
us  once  to  change  us.  The  act  of  his  son  had  defaced 
for  ever  the  beautifully  drawn  chart  of  human  behaviour 
by  which  he  had  regulated  his  own  thoughts.  Dating 
from  that  catastrophe  the  unhappy  father  had  not  bear- 
ings by  which  to  go. 

"  Her  tutor  has  done  her  no  good,  I  regret  to  say." 

"Tutor,  tutor!    What  do  you  mean?" 

"  I  refer  to  the  young  man  Emma  sent  to  coach  her. 
The  wretched  child  has  fallen  violently  in  love." 

A  fortnight  ago  he  would  probably  have  called  his  wife 
a  fool  for  allowing  herself  to  hold  such  a  theory  in  regard 
to  one  of  their  offspring.  Now  he  could  only  resume  his 
tour  of  the  room  with  another  nerve  laid  bare.  The  world 
in  which  he  had  dwelt  for  sixty  more  or  less  peaceful 
years  was  falling  in  upon  him. 

While  he  continued  to  stagger  up  and  down  the  room 
his  wife  withdrew  her  gaze  from  that  unhappy  figure  and 
sat  down  to  write  a  letter.  It  was  a  brief  note  of  invita- 
tion to  Mr.  Breffit  Ms;  it  sought  the  pleasure  of  his  com- 
pany at  luncheon  at  two  o'clock  on  the  Saturday  following. 

She  asked  Broke  to  read  it. 

When  he  returned  the  note  to  her  she  was  oppressed  by 
the  coldness  of  his  hands. 

"  Give  me  a  bit  of  time,"  he  said  in  a  voice  she  could 
hardly  hear.  "  Time  to  think  it  over.  Mustn't  decide  to- 
night.    No  need  to  decide  to-night." 

"  Yes,  Edmund,  to-night.  We  must  make  up  our  minds 
here  and  now.  We  can  then  put  it  away  from  us  once 
and  for  all." 

"  Yes,  it's  right,  I  daresay.  Always  right,  Jane,  in  these 
things.  But  I  am  not  equal  to  it  to-night.  Save  it  until 
to-morrow;  our  heads  will  be  clearer." 

"  No,  Edmund,  let  us  have  done  with  it  to-night.  It  is 
the  only  way.     We  spare  ourselves  if  we  do." 

Suddenly  the  tormented  man  broke  out  in  his  more 
strident  self. 


258  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  You  shall  not  do  it ;  my  God,  you  shall  not !  " 
He  tore  the  letter  out  of  his  wife's  fingers,  crushed  it 
and  flung  it  in  the  grate. 
She  confronted  him  steadily. 
"  You  seal  your  doom,  Edmund." 
"  Let  them  do  their  worst,  and  curse  them !  " 
He  walked  out  of  the  room,  the  door  slamming  behind 
him.     A  little  afterwards  a  second  door  slammed  far  away 
in  the  house.     By  the  dull  and  heavy  clang  Mrs.  Broke 
knew  it  to  be  the  front  door  of  the  entrance  hall.     She 
looked  at  the  clock.     It  was  five  minutes  to  two  of  the 
May  morning. 

Very  deliberately  she  sat  down  again  at  the  waiting- 
table  and  re-wrote  word  for  word  the  invitation  to  Mr. 
Breffit  Ms.  She  put  the  letter  in  the  post-box  in  the  hall ; 
and  then,  proceeding  to  the  housekeeper's  room,  deserted 
hours  ago,  she  struck  a  match,  lit  a  spirit  lamp,  and  made 
herself  a  cup  of  tea. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

IN  WHICH  TWO  MATRIMONIAL  RICHMONDS  TAKE  THE  FIELD 

THREE  days  later  the  evening  papers  were  selling  in 
London  like  hot  cakes  with  the  aid  of  a  spicy  bill  of 
fare.  Every  patron  of  tube  and  omnibus,  every  habitue 
of  the  grated  Bread  shop  and  chop  house  of  the  city  was 
bidden  to  the  banquet  by  great  capital  letters,  as  black  as 
ink  could  make  them.  There  was  no  doubt  as  to  the 
stimulating  nature  of  the  fare.  "  A  Thames  Bubble — Col- 
lapse of  the  Thames  Valley  Goldfields  Syndicate — Meet- 
ing of  Shareholders — Stormy  Scenes — Remarkable  Speech 
of  a  Director." 

Here  was  meat  for  the  British  Public  to  gorge  upon. 

Broke's  eloquence  had  been  reported  carefully.  To  be 
sure,  his  periods  owed  something  to  the  art  of  the  journal- 
ist. But  nothing  could  rob  his  language  of  its  special 
quality;  and  the  personality  of  the  speaker  was  there  in 
all  its  naivete.  As  one  organ  of  opinion  declared  in  a 
leading  article  upon  the  subject:  "The  quaint  spectacle 
of  a  guinea  pig  waving  aloft  the  banner  of  purity,  and 
calling  down  fire  from  heaven  upon  the  heads  of  his  kind 
was  enough  to  make  the  British  public  sit  up  and  purr." 
Indeed,  the  inspirer  of  this  simile  awoke  to  find  himself 
more  famous  than  he  had  ever  been  in  his  life  before. 
The  illustrated  papers  came  out  with  pictures  of  him  in 
varying  forms  and  stages  of  the  libellous.  Society  snap- 
shots had  a  short  biography  by  One  Who  had  Fagged  for 
Him  at  Eton;  and  Classy  Cuttings  revealed  to  its  readers 
the  kind  of  shaving  soap  he  used,  and  settled  forever  the 
vexed  question  whether  he  wore  his  hair  parted  in  the 
middle  or  at  the  side. 

It  was  May  now,  and  the  deepest  gloom  seemed  to  have 

259 


26o  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

settled  on  the  family  of  Covenden.  There  was  to  be  no 
London  season  for  them  this  year,  with  the  exception  of 
Delia,  who  had  been  condemned  to  spend  a  fortnight  at 
Grosvenor  Street  with  Aunt  Emma  in  order  that  she 
might  be  presented,  and  who  would,  as  she  vowed  with 
inexpressibly  bitter  tears,  have  preferred  to  stay  at  home. 
Not  that  she  was  any  happier  at  home.  And  her  forlorn 
look  had  been  commented  upon  by  other  people  besides 
her  Uncle  Charles. 

Too  well  did  her  sisters  know  the  cause  of  her  unhappi- 
ness.  But  they  had  not  a  spark  of  pity  for  her;  indeed, 
they  were  filled  with  scorn.  The  reflection  upon  them- 
selves was  by  far  the  most  grievous  they  had  ever  had  to 
bear.  They  could  hardly  believe  it  of  one  who  in  external 
things  resembled  them  one  and  all  so  closely ;  in  one  whom 
nature  must  have  designed  to  be  one  of  themselves.  They 
could  only  ascribe  it  to  her  having  those  films  to  her  eyes, 
and  those  lashes  that  :curled  up  at  the  ends.  They  were 
humbly  grateful  that  they  were  without  them,  now  that 
they  saw  what  the  possession  of  them  meant.  If,  as  they 
shrewdly  supposed,  such  things  as  films  and  curling  eye- 
lashes were  allowed  by  judges  to  be  marks  of  beauty,  as 
were  pricked  ears  and  bowed  legs  in  a  terrier  puppy,  they 
began  to  see  the  force  of  that  adage  with  which  they  were 
wont  to  console  themselves:  that  if  you  were  beautiful  it 
was  very  difficult  to  be  good.  Not  that  in  their  opinion 
their  youngest  sister  was  any  less  plain  than  anybody  else. 

In  any  case  they  remained  inflexible.  She  was  sent  to 
Coventry  for  an  indefinite  period,  and  it  was  only  after 
Joan  had  taken  a  whole  day  to  think  the  matter  over  that 
she  was  allowed  to  retain  her  privileges  in  regard  to  their 
common  room. 

"  It  is  only  because  she  is  such  a  kid,  hardly  more  than 
a  flapper,"  said  that  justiciary,  delivering  judgment  before 
the  court.  "If  it  were  not,  this  room  should  be  forbidden 
her." 

A  slight  sigh  of  relief  was  heard  to  pass  round  the  as- 
sembly, and  Harriet  rose  hurriedly  to  quit  it  lest  anybody 
should  see  there  were  tears  in  her  eyes. 


TWO  MATRIMONIAL  RICHMONDS        261 

The  same  Spartan  justice  was  rendered  to  Billy.  It 
tore  their  hearts,  but  a  command  of  their  father  was  their 
highest  conception  of  law.  So  obedient  were  they  to  his 
mandate,  that  not  only  did  they  refrain  from  mentioning 
the  name  of  their  brother  in  his  presence,  but  by  a  tacit 
consent  it  was  banished  in  their  private  intercourse. 
Delia,  it  is  true,  had  so  far  forgotten  herself  as  once  to 
speak  of  him,  but  such  terrible  freezing  glances  had  she 
received  for  her  pains,  that  she  was  not  likely  to  venture 
to  do  so  again.  Their  mother  also  had  spoken  of  him  sev- 
eral times  in  their  hearing,  but  their  perfect  loyalty  to  their 
father  forbade  their  taking  pleasure  in  these  occasions. 

Their  mother,  indeed,  spoke  to  them  freely  of  Billy, 
and  even  said  it  would  give  her  pleasure  if  they  made  a 
pilgrimage  to  the  cottage  on  the  hill  to  see  his  wife.  It 
would  have  given  them  pleasure,  too,  because  whatever 
their  father's  mandate,  the  fact  remained  that  Billy  was 
Billy  still.  Even  the  mightiest  law-giver  cannot  induce 
oblivion  of  what  once  has  been.  And  again  they  had  a 
natural  curiosity  to  look  upon  the  creature  who  had 
wrought  their  brother's  ruin.  Extravagant  pictures  were 
in  their  minds.  They  would  have  paid  their  shillings  to 
behold  her  with  even  greater  eagerness  than  those  they 
paid  to  behold  the  strange  things  in  the  menagerie  that 
came  every  year  to  Cuttisham  Fair.  Less  uncompromis- 
ing types  of  conscience  might  have  found  an  excuse  to 
look  upon  this  fearsome  creature,  but  their  father's  man- 
date must  be  obeyed  not  in  the  letter  merely  but  in  the 
spirit. 

Delia  returned  from  London  less  happy  if  possible  than 
when  she  went  away.  To  every  reasonable  and  right- 
thinking  girl  the  experiences  crowded  into  that  fortnight 
would  at  least  have  been  exciting.  But  as  Aunt  Emma 
wrote  to  inform  her  mother  as  soon  as  she  had  returned 
to  her  home,  she  had  been  wholly  uninspired  by  dances 
and  parties,  and  even  by  the  drawing-room  itself. 

Although  Delia  seemed  not  a  bit  happier  for  her  glimpse 
of  the  London  season  there  was  one  alteration  in  her 
which  her  sisters  allowed  was   for  the  better.     She  no 


262  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

longer  permitted  herself  that  undue,  that  licentious  indul- 
gence in  tears.  They  did  not  lie  so  near  the  surface; 
quite  a  chance  shot  would  no  longer  call  them  forth ;  while 
the  absence  of  a  red  inflammation  about  her  eyelids  proved 
that  she  did  not  spend  so  many  hours  in  her  bedroom  in 
private  weepings.  It  could  at  least  be  said  that  she  had 
brought  back  a  keener  sense  of  decency  from  the  London 
season. 

One  day  a  stranger  came  to  luncheon,  a  man  whom  they 
could  not  remember  to  have  seen  before.  He  was  young 
and  rather  handsome  in  a  somewhat  florid  style;  and  he 
was  extremely  well  dressed.  Mr.  Breffit  was  his  name, 
and  their  father,  as  so  often  was  the  case  with  him  now, 
hardly  said  a  word  throughout  the  meal.  Their  mother, 
as  was  her  custom  when  a  guest  was  present,  was  in  very 
good  form,  and  oddly  enough  she  made  one  or  two  quite 
flattering  references  to  Delia,  who  had  the  strange  man  for 
her  neighbour,  and  seemed  to  insist  in  her  delicate  way 
that  Delia  should  converse  with  him.  Their  surprise  and 
consternation  were  great.  Never  before  had  one  of  them, 
not  even  Joan  herself,  been  singled  out  for  public  notice 
by  the  august  president  of  their  destinies.  And  Delia  of 
all  people! 

It  was  their  mother,  however,  who  had  to  sustain  the 
chief  share  in  the  conversation.  Without  her  there  would 
hardly  have  been  any  at  all.  Delia,  in  spite  of  her  new 
honours,  seldom  allowed  herself  to  go  beyond  the  limits 
imposed  by  her  habitual  "  yes "  and  "  no."  Mr.  Breffit 
also  did  not  seem  to  be  gifted  with  powers  of  any  remark- 
able range.  He  confined  himself  mainly  to  one  topic: 
did  they  know  So  and  So  of  Such  and  Such?  He  had 
just  been  spending  a  fortnight  at  Such  and  Such.  The 
number  of  houses  at  which  he  was  a  welcome  guest  was 
wonderful. 

"  You  were  at  Cambridge,  were  you  not  ?  " 

"  Oh,  yes ;  three  years  at  Trinity,  mostly  wasted,  I  am 
afraid." 

"  Ah,  Mr.  Breffit,  you  are  too  modest.     Did  you  ever 


TWO  MATRIMONIAL  RICHMONDS        263 

meet  a  young  man  of  the  name  of  Porter  of  your  college? 
He  was,  I  believe,  about  your  time." 

"  Porter— Porter,"  Mr.  Breffit  knitted  his  brow.  "I 
seem  to  know  the  name,  but  Trinity,  of  course,  is  not  a 
small  college.  I  believe  there  was  a  man  of  that  name 
who  rowed  bow  in  the  Hall  boat." 

"  He  comes  from  Cuttisham.  His  father  is  a  bookseller 
there." 

"  I  don't  seem  to  have  met  him,"  said  Mr.  Breffit. 

"  As  he  came  from  this  neighbourhood,  and  he  went  to 
the  same  college  about  your  time,  I  thought  you  might  per- 
haps. I  am  interested  in  him  because  my  sister-in-law, 
Lady  Bosket,  predicts  great  things  of  him." 

"  Ah,  yes,  I  remember,  there  was  a  man  of  that  name ; 
a  harmless,  quiet,  reading  man,  although  I  can  hardly  re- 
call him." 

"  I  should  think  he  would  be.  But  I  gather  that  you 
did  not  know  him  very  intimately." 

"  Not  very." 

To  the  significance  of  his  tone  Mr.  Breffit  added  a  ges- 
ture of  polite  deprecation. 

"  A  recluse  probably  ?  " 

"  I  really  don't  know,  but  I  should  say  he  was." 

"  Was  he  well  thought  of  in  the  college  ?  " 

"  I  really  don't  know,  but  I  should  say  not." 

"  You  surprise  one.  My  sister-in-law  will  be  disap- 
pointed if  he  does  not  turn  out  well." 

"  It  is  quite  probable  he  was  clever.  Outsiders  mostly 
are. 

Her  object  achieved,  Mrs.  Broke  changed  the  subject. 

"  How  is  your  father  ?  " 

The  young  man  was  disconcerted  a  little  by  the  unex- 
pectedness of  the  question. 

"  I  have  not  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  him  for  quite 
a  long  time,"  she  said,  to  soften  a  certain  awkwardness  in 
the  pause. 

"  I  was  not  aware  that  you  knew  him,"  said  Mr.  Breffit, 
measuring  his  hostess  with  a  wary  eye. 


264  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  He  has  been  a  particular  friend  of  Mr.  Broke's  for 
thirty  years." 

"  He  is  quite  well,  thank  you,"  said  the  young  man 
coolly. 

He  had  made  up  his  mind  already  that  he  had  never 
been  so  bored  in  his  life.  He  supposed  that  old  families 
were  very  well  in  their  way,  but  if  this  menage  was  a  fair 
average  specimen  of  what  they  were  in  general,  long  might 
he  be  spared  from  contact  with  them!  To  begin  with, 
the  place  itself  seemed  to  smell  of  about  three  centuries 
behind  the  present.  The  old-world  atmosphere  was  doubt- 
less excellent,  but  he  was  not  sure  that  he  would  not  pre- 
fer to  dispense  with  a  few  links  in  his  pedigree  and  rub 
along  without  it.  There  was  the  pompous  overbearing 
old  bird  of  a  father  at  the  far  end  of  the  mahogany,  who 
had  hardly  a  word  to  throw  to  a  dog,  but  gobbled  beef 
and  swilled  ale,  a  kind  of  combination  of  a  butcher  and  a 
farmer,  with  a  great  red  face  and  a  nose  like  a  handle  on 
a  door.  Then  there  were  half  a  dozen  girls,  whom  he 
took  to  be  the  daughters  of  the  house,  without  exception 
the  ugliest  set  of  women  he  had  ever  seen  in  his  life. 
They  were  all  nose  and  elbow.  They,  too,  seldom  opened 
their  mouths,  except  for  the  purposes  of  the  table,  which 
to  do  them  justice  they  did  with  some  effect.  One  of 
them  sat  beside  him,  and  when  he  tried  to  talk  to  her  she 
said  "  yes  "  and  "  no."  The  mother,  however,  was  a  bit 
better.  You  would  not  exactly  call  her  a  beauty,  but  she 
was  by  way  of  being  rather  agreeable,  although  she  had  a 
foolish  habit  of  asking  questions. 

Before  the  luncheon  itself,  however,  all  these  things 
paled.  Speaking  out  of  a  moderately  ripe  experience, 
young  Mr.  Breffit  could  truthfully  say  it  was  the  very 
worst  luncheon  to  which  he  had  ever  sat  down.  He  might 
have  been  back  at  his  private  school.  Hardly  a  decent 
salad,  tough,  under-done  mutton,  over-done  beef,  ale  only 
fit  for  harvesters  and  claret  only  fit  for  the  pigs.  The 
servants  too  seemed  as  uppish  as  the  devil,  and  as  slow 
as  a  funeral.  It  was  a  luncheon  of  which  one  would  have 
thought  anybody  would  have  been  ashamed.     If  this  was 


TWO  MATRIMONIAL  RICHMONDS        265 

what  being  before  the  Conquest  meant,  he  thanked  Heaven 
that  he  was  rather  more  modern. 

The  young  man  was  in  this  uncomfortable  state  of  mind, 
when  two  men  entered  the  room  he  had  never  seen  be- 
fore. One  was  an  oldish,  rather  grotesque  little  man,  in 
shabby  tweeds  and  cloth  gaiters,  with  a  straw  in  his  mouth. 
He  conveyed  the  impression  that  he  was  a  groom,  rather 
down  on  his  luck,  who  was  looking  for  a  job.  The  impres- 
sion was  confirmed  when  you  noticed  how  bleared  were 
his  eyes  and  how  swollen  was  his  nose.  Drink  had  been 
his  downfall,  there  could  be  no  doubt  about  that. 

The  man  who  came  with  him  was  also  a  queer-looking 
fish.  He  was  a  youngish  man,  thirty-five  or  so,  who 
looked  far  older  than  his  years,  with  an  earnest  and  per- 
plexed yet  very  weary  expression.  He  was  very  pale  and 
thin  and  high  in  the  shoulders,  his  peaked  face  had  an 
anxious  look  upon  it,  and  was  subject  to  grotesque  nervous 
contortions.  He  followed  on  the  heels  of  the  drunken 
groom  with  the  straw,  and  Mrs.  Broke  beckoning  to  him, 
he  was  good  enough  to  come  and  sit  near  Mr.  Breffit,  who 
with  the  insight  into  men  and  things  that  had  long  been  a 
source  of  pride  to  its  possessor,  had  set  him  down  at  once 
as  the  local  curate. 

"  I  have  brought  Harry,"  said  the  man  with  the  straw 
in  a  hoarse  loud  voice.  "  We  should  ha'  stayed  over  at 
the  court,  only  their  whisky  is  so  poisonous.  Last  time 
I  said  never  again;  besides,  Harry  wanted  to  come  and 
see  you.  And  how's  my  little  cockyoly  birds?  All  quite 
well,  thank  you.  Uncle  Charles,  and  hope  you  are  the  same 
—what?" 

The  funny  old  bird  took  a  seat  in  the  midst  of  the  girls 
some  distance  away,  rather  to  the  relief  of  young  Mr. 
Breffit,  who,  however,  noted  with  envy  that  the  old  fool 
of  a  butler  came  forward  with  far  more  alacrity  than  any 
he  had  yet  shown,  with  a  jar  of  whisky  and  a  syphon  of 
soda  water.  Groom  or  no  groom  the  man  with  the  straw 
was  devilish  lucky  to  be  able  to  escape  the  ale  and  claret 
in  that  manner. 

In  the  meantime  the  young-old  man  was  beaming  with 


266  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

anxious  gravity  upon  his  hostess.  It  was  a  stereotyped 
and  conventional  gesture,  and  he  performed  it  with  a 
dogged  solemnity  as  of  one  doing  his  duty. 

"  Charmed  to  see  you  about  again,  Harry,"  said  Mrs. 
Broke,  with  an  affectionate  smile  accompanied  by  a  most 
motherly  tone.  "  How  is  the  poor  dear  chest  ?  Is  it  two 
still,  or  do  you  now  pin  your  faith  to  one." 

"  One  and  a  bit,"  said  Harry  in  a  wheezy  whisper. 

"  I  congratulate  you  on  the  bit.  How  tenacious  of  you. 
To  my  knowledge  you  have  held  on  to  that  bit  for  the  last 
ten  years." 

"  I  want  to  do  the  right  thing,"  said  the  young-old  man 
in  a  whisper  wheezier  than  ever.  "  They  tell  me  it  will  be 
inconvenient  if  I  give  up,  so  I  am  doing  what  I  can  to  stay 
on." 

"  Then  that  is  why  you  wintered  at  Davos  ?  What  a 
devotion  to  duty !  " 

"  His  vicar  must  think  a  lot  of  him  if  he  sent  him  to 
Davos,"  his  neighbour  made  the  comment  to  himself. 

"  Do  you  think  so  ?  "  said  the  young-old  man.  "  I  al- 
ways try  to  do  the  right  thing." 

**  My  dear  Harry,  why  assure  one  of  that  ?  Everybody 
knows  it.  One  never  thinks  of  you  without  recalling  poor 
dear  Nelson's  phrase  about  *  England  expects.'  " 

Mrs.  Broke  beamed  upon  the  young-old  man.  A  tinge 
of  colour  mottled  his  wan  cheeks  and  he  smiled  faintly. 

"I  think  duty  is  so  beautiful,"  Mrs.  Broke  went  on. 
"  Without  it  existence  would  indeed  be  hollow.  One  won- 
ders, Harry,  that  more  people  have  not  dedicated  their 
lives  to  it  as  you  have  done.  We  should  be  a  happier,  a 
healthier,  a  more  stable  race." 

"  Harry  is  the  happiest,  healthiest,  and  most  stable  devil 
I  ever  saw,"  said  Lord  Bosket  at  the  other  end  of  the 
table  in  an  aside  to  Broke. 

"  Surely  he  can't  last  long  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know ;  he's  a  queer  bird.  For  the  last  ten 
years  everybody  has  said  he  can't  last  long,  but  here  he  is 
still  drinkin'  draught  stout  and  playin'  patience.  He 
wheezes  a  bit  more  than  he  did  in  Mary's  time,  but  he  still 


TWO  MATRIMONIAL  RICHMONDS        267 

hangs  on.  And  I  think  he  will  as  long  as  he  makes  up  his 
mind  to  it.  I  never  saw  such  a  feller  for  makin'  up  his 
mind." 

"  I  should  want  to  give  in  if  I  was  like  that." 

"  Oh,  I  daresay  he  does.  But  his  people  think  he  ought 
to  hang  on  as  long  as  he  can  to  shut  Algy  out.  They 
want  him  to  marry  again  as  Mary  didn't  come  off.  I 
shouldn't  be  surprised  if  that's  what  has  brought  him  here 
now.  But  whoever  he  marries  she  won't  have  to  wait 
long  to  be  a  dowager." 

Broke  was  sunk  in  thought  for  a  minute,  and  then  he 
said :  "  I — ah — don't  fancy  a  fellow  like  that  for  one  of  our 
girls.     It  doesn't  seem  right  to  me.     Does  Jane  know  ?  " 

"Of  course  she  does.     Catch  her  missing  a  chance." 

Mrs.  Broke  was  even  yet  dilating  to  the  Duke  of  Wim- 
bledon on  the  sacred  character  of  duty.  That  hollow- 
cheeked  and  weary-eyed  peer  nodded  his  head  slowly  in 
response  at  automatic  intervals.  Plainly  he  took  the  re- 
sponsibilities this  life  conferred  upon  him  with  a  becom- 
ing seriousness.  They  appeared  to  begin  and  end  in  a 
doing  of  the  right  thing.  Every  act  he  performed  was 
marked  out  according  to  that  convention.  His  anxiety 
to  do  the  right  thing  was  stamped  on  every  line  of  his 
worn  face.  His  manner  was  a  compliment  to  all  present ; 
his  desire  to  give  satisfaction  was  so  immense.  His  coun- 
tenance might  be  stamped  with  every  sign  of  affliction, 
but  it  was  far  from  being  reflected  in  his  animated  cour- 
tesy. 

After  having  discussed  with  his  hostess  for  ten  minutes 
the  sacred  character  of  duty,  it  was  in  the  pursuit  of  his 
usual  scheme  of  conduct  that  he  turned  to  the  young  man 
by  his  side,  with  whom  he  had  not  as  yet  exchanged  a 
word. 

"  Awfully  nice  day,"  he  said  in  his  wheeziest  whisper. 

"U-u-m-m?" 

Mr.  Breffit  made  a  sound  like  a  bee  humming.  He  had 
heard  what  his  neighbour  had  said  perfectly  well,  but  he 
was  not  in  a  mood  to  engage  In  a  discussion  of  the  weather 
with  the  local  curate. 


268  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

*'  Awfully  nice  day,"  his  neighbour  repeated  gently. 

"  Very." 

'*  Do  you  play  golf  ?  " 

"  Do  I  play  golf  ?    Yes.    Do  you  ?  " 

"  No,  I  do  not." 

"Hunt?" 

"  No,  I  do  not.'' 

"Shoot?" 

"  No,  I  do  not." 

"Cricket?" 

"  No,  I  do  not." 

"Anything  you  do  do?" 

"  I  like  a  game  of  patience." 

"  You  like  a  game  of  patience.     Yes,  I  daresay." 

Mr.  Breffit  turned  his  back  abruptly  on  his  neighbour, 
and  beckoned  to  the  butler. 

"  Get  me  another  glass  of  beer,  will  you  ?  " 

The  young-old  man  turned  his  anxious  face  to  the  but- 
ler. 

"  Do  you  happen,"  he  said  ingratiatingly,  "  to  have 
brown  stout  on  draught?" 

"  We  have  brown  stout,  your  grace,  on  draught,  or  we 
have  it  bottled." 

"  Do  you  mind  getting  me  a  little  of  the  draught  ?  And 
do  you  mind  bringing  it  with  a  bit  of  froth  on  it.  I  like  a 
bit  of  froth." 

"  Thank  you,  your  grace." 
*  Your  grace!     What  did  the  old  fool  mean?  Mr.  Breffit 
asked  himself.     He  turned  to  the  daughter  of  the  house 
who  sat  at  his  left  hand. 

"  I  say,"  he  said  in  an  anxious  whisper,  "  who  is  the 
sportsman  on  my  right  ?  " 

"  The  Duke  of  Wimbledon." 

Young  Mr.  Breffit  was  rather  taken  aback.  It  didn't 
seem  quite  fair  to  dump  a  real  live  duke  down  beside  one, 
and  never  to  let  one  know.  He  gave  the  noble  valetudi- 
narian a  nudge. 

"  I  say,  Duke,  I  suppose  you  would  know  my  friend 
Shovehalf penny,  son,  you  know,  of  Lord  Coddam?" 


TWO  MATRIMONIAL  RICHMONDS        269 

Yes,  the  Duke  had  the  pleasure  of  knowing  Shovehalf- 
penny,  also  his  father,  Lord  Coddam.  That  was  luck;  he 
had  got  away  in  good  style ;  he  would  now  proceed  to  make 
the  pace  a  bit.  Did  he  know  Lord  Huffey?  Yes,  the 
Duke  knew  Huffey.  With  that  further  success  young  Mr. 
Breffit  proceeded  to  cut  out  the  work. 

Huffey,  Huffey's  place,  and  Huffey's  people  were  passed 
under  review  for  the  delectation  of  the  weary  young-old 
man,  who  listened  with  grave  attention  and  nodded  his 
head,  and  said  "  yes !  "  and  *'  oh,  yes ! "  at  intervals,  al- 
though he  had  not  the  least  interest  in  Huffey,  and  had 
only  met  him  twice  in  his  life.  The  meek  and  inoffensive 
victim,  who  had  never  so  much  as  harmed  a  fly  in  all  the 
course  of  his  days,  bore  the  remorseless  Mr.  Breffit  with 
the  stoicism  bred  of  long  affliction.  He  listened  with  his 
head  bent  slightly  forward  that  he  might  not  miss  a  word, 
and  his  thin  chest  and  pale  blue  chin  protruded  in  polite 
earnestness  towards  his  pitiless  tormentor.  Balzac,  when 
he  fashioned  his  phrase  about  genius,  might  with  equal 
truth  have  rendered  it,  "  La  patience  angelique  des  dues." 

Secure  in  the  impression  he  was  making — it  was  clear 
that  his  auditor  was  greatly  interested — ^the  young  man 
rose  in  the  intoxication  of  success  to  more  ambitious 
flights.  His  old  father  had  shown  a  true  instinct  when  he 
had  purchased  Tufton.  This  was  where  the  little  place 
came  in. 

"  You  must  come  and  see  us  at  Tufton,  Duke.  You 
must  really." 

The  gentle  bundle  of  nerves  seemed  almost  to  struggle 
a  weak  instant  in  the  young  man's  grasp. 

"  Tufton,"  he  murmured  dreamily.  "  You  live  at  Tuf- 
ton?" 

*'  Don't  you  know  ? "  The  tone  of  expostulation  was 
delicate.  "  It  is  ours  now.  My  father  took  it  off  the 
hands  of  one  of  his  oldest  friends,  Lord  Algernon  Raynes. 
You  know  poor  old  Algy,  of  course.  Everybody  knows 
poor  old  Algy.  You  must  have  heard,  everybody's  heard, 
of  what  a  frightful  cropper  the  poor  old  fellow  came  over 
that  dashing  little  widow  he  met  at  Monte  Carlo.     His 


270  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

people  are  awfully  cut  up ;  awfully  rough  on  them,  as  they 
are  not  overburdened  with  the  things  of  this  world,  as  I 
daresay  you  know.  There  is  no  saying  what  would  have 
happened  had  not  a  friend  of  the  family  come  forward  in 
the  nick  of  time  to  take  Tufton  off  their  hands." 

The  young  man's  neighbour  turned  to  take  a  fuller  look 
at  him. 

"  You  have  bought  Tufton,"  he  said.  "  Is  your  name 
Breffit,  may  I  ask?" 

There  was  a  measure  of  embarrassment  in  the  head  of 
the  Raynes  family  when  he  put  this  question,  but  at  least 
it  was  no  greater  than  that  with  which  Mr.  Breffit  an- 
swered it. 

"  Ye — es,"  he  said  irresolutely.  "  Hamilton  Breffit  is 
my  name." 

A  strange  weary  smile  flickered  an  instant  in  the  pale 
face  of  his  victim. 

"  It  was  good  of  you  to  come  to  our  aid,"  he  said 
earnestly.  "  I  am  sure  we  are  deeply  sensible  of  your 
father's  kindness;  we  might  have  had  it  on  our  hands  a 
long  time  had  he  not  made  his  offer.  I  daresay,  if  we 
could  have  afforded  to  wait,  more  might  have  been  made 
of  it,  but,  nevertheless,  I  am  sure  we  are  grateful  to  your 
father  for  his  promptness." 

Young  Mr.  Breffit  was  overcome  by  a  tremendous  pang 
right  in  the  centre  of  the  brain.  What  a  toss  he  had 
taken;  he  was  completely  knocked  out!  Why  had  he 
not  had  the  sense  to  remember  that  he  was  talking  to  the 
head  of  the  family.  It  was  a  great  pity  that  he  had  not 
left  him  at  the  local  curate. 

Half  an  hour  later,  as  the  young  man  swung  down  the 
drive  at  a  furious  pace,  he  swore  a  great  oath  that  all 
the  king's  horses  and  all  the  king's  men  should  not  induce 
him  to  set  foot  in  that  house  again. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

PROVIDES   OPPORTUNITY   FOR  A   LITTLE   MORAL  TEACHING 

ONE  morning  Mrs.  Broke  summoned  Delia  to  her 
room.  A  large  basket  laden  with  flowers  was  on 
the  table. 

"  I  want  you  to  take  these  to  the  cottage  on  the  hill. 
Be  careful.     There  are  eggs  underneath." 

An  implicit  obedience  being  as  much  an  instinct  with 
Delia  as  with  her  sisters  she  did  not  pause  to  allow  ques- 
tions to  surge  on  her  lips.  She  took  the  basket  and  set 
forth. 

"  That  child  looks  wretchedly  ill,"  was  her  mother's 
comment  as  she  closed  the  door.  "  It  seems  as  though 
this  little  hothouse  of  a  world  of  ours  is  getting  too  high 
a  temperature." 

To  Delia  her  mother's  command  seemed  to  break  down 
the  barrier  that  had  been  raised  between  them  and  the 
dwellers  in  that  sinister  little  cottage.  But  she  would 
have  been  much  easier  in  her  mind  had  the  command  been 
her  father's.  Yet  for  the  moment  she  was  dominated  by 
an  overpowering  curiosity.  She  had  an  almost  morbid 
desire  to  look  upon  the  creature  who  had  wrought  her 
brother's  ruin. 

Still,  the  sense  she  had  that  obedience  to  her  mother 
meant  disloyalty  to  her  father  rendered  her  unhappy  as 
she  went.  She  knew  that  her  parents  did  not  always  see 
eye  to  eye ;  and  in  the  present  case  the  divergence  of  their 
points  of  view  was  very  sharp.  For  that  reason  she  hoped 
she  would  not  meet  her  father  now.  She  did  not  take  the 
short  way,  therefore,  through  the  home  farm,  lest  she 
should  meet  him  there,  but  went  the  longer  road,  a  differ- 
ence of  half  a  mile. 

The  fear  of  detection  gave  way  to  a  feeling  of  guilt 

271 


2^2  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

when  the  cottage  came  into  sight.  Indeed,  she  had  a  sense 
of  disloyalty  to  him  she  had  always  worshipped,  and  was 
not  sure  as  she  lifted  the  latch  of  the  cottage  gate  that 
she  would  not  have  preferred  to  be  found  out.  She  de- 
spised herself  for  having  come  the  longest  way  to  avoid 
him.  However,  hardly  had  she  set  foot  on  the  narrow 
path,  brave  on  either  side  with  bright  flowers,  when  she 
was  startled  by  strong,  familiar  tones  coming  through  the 
open  door  of  the  cottage.  Almost  before  she  could  recog- 
nize them  a  beloved  form  filled  the  doorway.     It  was  Billy. 

At  the  sight  of  him,  with  the  bright  sun  weaving  a  halo 
round  that  handsome  head,  all  nicely  calculated  forms  of 
conduct  vanished. 

"  Hallo,  it  is  little  Del ! "  he  cried,  with  the  happy  shOut 
of  a  boy.  "  Little  Del  has  come  to  see  us.  You  dear 
kid ;  how  ripping  of  you !  " 

He  made  a  proprietary  grab  at  her  as  when  he  used  to 
romp  with  them  of  old.  With  one  hand  he  caught  and 
held  her,  and  with  the  other  tore  the  basket  from  her. 

"  They  are  eggs,"  she  had  the  presence  of  mind  to  gasp. 

"  You  dear  kid !  " 

He  planted  a  kiss  upon  the  apple-coloured  cheek. 

She  struggled  to  keep  the  tears  from  showing  in  her 
eyes.  He  had  not  changed  in  the  least.  Billy  was  Billy 
still :  the  same  laughing,  fearless,  careless,  insolently  tender 
brother  whom  they  all  adored.  He  was  the  same  brother 
who  had  rolled  them  in  hay  a  thousand  times;  who  had 
chased  them  round  the  farm;  who  had  made  them  hide 
from  him  in  barns  and  corn  cribs,  lofts  and  mangers,  and 
the  strangest  places ;  who  had  shown  them  a  lead  over  the 
stiffest  fences,  and  whose  line  they  were  prepared  to  fol- 
low to  the  world's  end. 

"  Come  on  in,"  he  said,  squeezing  her  small  body,  and 
half  carrying,  half  dragging  her  through  the  door  of  the 
cottage,  just  in  the  way  that  he  used  to  convey  them  as 
his  prisoners  two  at  a  time  in  those  strong  arms  of  old. 
"  My  old  little  girl  must  see  my  new  little  girl,  eh  ?  " 

In  this  uncompromising  fashion  the  rather  frightened 


A  LITTLE  MORAL  TEACHING  273 

if  joyously  excited  Delia  was  taken  to  view  the  fierce 
creature. 

"  Here  she  is,"  cried  Billy.  "  Isn't  she  a  little  beauty? 
Kiss  her,  Del,  and  tell  her  that  she  is." 

The  two  girls  met  one  another  irresolutely  with  their 
eyes.  They  were  both  a  little  afraid,  both  a  little  bewil- 
dered; they  were  as  shy  and  distrustful  as  two  strange 
kittens  on  the  same  hearthrug.  But  Alice  was  the  first 
to  yield.  She  was  even  timider  than  Delia;  and  she  was 
soon  shrinking  from  the  honest  gaze  of  Billy's  sister,  who 
was  looking  in  vain  for  a  trace  of  the  wicked  monster 
she  had  expected  to  find.  Alice  coloured  vividly  and  her 
eyes  fell;  but  in  almost  the  same  instant,  Delia  sprang 
towards  her  with  outstretched  arms. 

The  old  woman,  the  aunt,  stood  watching  from  far  back 
against  the  wall.  There  was  a  kind  of  reticence  in  Billy 
also.  But  there  was  also  gratitude.  Delia's  act  had  ap- 
pealed to  him.  And  the  sight  of  his  young  wife  and  his 
young  sister  in  one  another's  arms  seemed  to  increase 
the  debt  he  owed  his  mother.  He  guessed  that  Delia's 
presence  was  due  to  her. 

Without  his  mother  he  saw  that  things  might  have  gone 
much  harder  with  Alice.  She  it  was  who  had  installed 
her  and  her  aunt  in  that  pleasant  place.  Also  she  had 
visited  her  once  or  twice,  he  had  learned ;  had  furnished 
the  cottage;  had  given  her  money,  and  had  generally 
looked  after  her.  Also  she  had  brought  Maud  Wayling 
there,  and  Maud  herself  had  come  there  once  or  twice  of 
her  own  accord.  Indeed,  from  the  eager  inquiries  that 
he  made  he  learned  that  his  mother  and  Maud  had  been 
more  than  kind.  But  with  all  his  wish  to  do  so,  he  could 
not  learn  that  one  of  his  sisters  had  taken  the  least  interest 
in  his  wife.  He  felt  that  more  keenly  than  he  cared  to 
own.  Not  once  had  they  been  to  the  cottage.  That  they 
were  acting  under  orders  from  their  father  was  the  only 
solace  that  could  atone  for  their  neglect. 

The  letter  he  had  received  from  his  father  he  had  half 
expected.     Instinctively  he  had  known  the  sort  of  man 


274  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

his  father  was  if  you  should  have  the  misfortune  to  cross 
him.  Practically  he  was  done  for  in  England;  he  had 
given  up  the  service  already.  His  means  would  not  permit 
him  to  follow  a  military  calling  and  to  keep  a  wife  as 
well.     Two  hundred  pounds  a  year! 

He  had  already  made  up  his  mind  that  the  best  thing 
he  could  do  was  to  go  out  to  the  colonies  for  a  year  or 
two.  He  could  not  stand  the  life  of  a  pauper  in  England, 
with  all  his  friends  giving  him  the  cold  shoulder.  No; 
South  Africa  was  the  place,  so  he  had  heard.  There  was 
said  to  be  a  big  future  for  that  country  and  any  amount  of 
money  to  be  made. 

The  desire  uppermost  in  his  mind  was  to  dispense  alto- 
gether with  his  father's  bounty.  That  was  wheTe  the 
shoe  pinched  at  present ;  had  he  had  anything  of  his  own 
on  which  to  keep  a  wife  he  would  have  gone  barefoot 
rather  than  accept  a  penny.  His  ponies  had  gone  already 
to  cover  what  he  owed,  and  you  could  hardly  say  they  had 
been  successful  in  their  object. 

It  made  him  groan  to  think  that  he  must  accept  his 
father's  bounty  for  his  little  girl.  However,  it  would  not 
be  for  long.  Still,  she  had  been  cut'  up  dreadfully  over 
his  plan ;  she  could  hardly  be  got  to  see  things  in  the  light 
in  which  he  saw  them  himself.  She  was  sure  they  could 
exist  without  his  having  to  go  thousands  of  miles  away 
to  earn  money.  To  her,  poor  little  kid!  two  hundred  a 
year  was  princely,  especially  with  a  cottage  to  live  in  rent 
free.  But  she  was  brave.  His  absence  would  try  her 
bitterly ;  but  she  was  prepared  to  endure  it  if  he  really  felt 
that  he  must  go. 

To-morrow  he  must  leave  her.  He  was  sure  it  would 
not  be  for  long.  He  had  tried  to  comfort  her  with  the 
promise  that  if  he  had  the  least  bit  of  luck  his  first  act 
would  be  to  return  for  her  and  her  aunt.  Like  his  mother, 
he  had  a  vein  of  cheery  optimism,  a  resolute  looking  at 
the  right  side  of  a  thing  that  had  generally  carried  him 
through.  When  it  was  necessary  he  was  not  without  a 
certain  stoicism  of  spirit,  after  the  fashion  of  his  kind. 

Delia's  coming  there  that  morning  had  given  him  enor- 


A  LITTLE  MORAL  TEACHING  275 

mous  pleasure.  He  had  been  afraid  that  aunt  and  niece 
would  be  left  without  friends.  Of  course,  there  was  his 
mother,  who  had  already  behaved  so  splendidly;  but  in 
his  heart  he  shared  the  feeling  of  his  sisters  in  regard  to 
her.  Whatever  she  might  say  or  do  you  were  never  quite 
sure  of  the  dear  old  mummy.  Somehow  you  never  quite 
knew  what  her  little  game  really  was. 

"  You  could  not  have  come  at  a  better  time,  Del,"  he 
said  in  the  old  frank  way.  "  I  am  going  away  to-morrow ; 
and  I  want  you  to  be  good  to  my  little  girl.  Promise  me 
you  will,  little  kid.  You  see,  she  might  get  rather  lonely 
if  nobody  comes  to  see  her  while  I  am  away." 

Delia  made  the  promise.  It  was  impossible  to  refuse; 
although  even  as  she  made  it  she  knew  it  was  an  act  of 
open  disloyalty  to  her  father,  and  that  wild  horses  would 
not  drag  her  sisters  to  that  cottage  door.  But  in  the  cir- 
cumstances she  felt  powerless.  And  his  young  wife  was 
very  sweet  and  beautiful. 

When  she  learned  that  her  brother  was  going  to  leave 
England  the  next  day,  in  spite  of  all  her  newly-acquired 
self-control,  the  sudden  tears  welled  up. 

"  Oh ! "  she  said,  with  a  pang  of  overmastering  bitter- 
ness. 

The  delicate-looking  wife  had  her  tears  under  better 
control,  but  it  seemed  to  Delia  that  in  her  eyes  was  some- 
thing worse.  There  was  a  look  in  them  which  was  to 
haunt  her  for  many  a  day. 

"Oh,  Billy!  How  can  you  leave  her?  If  she  were 
mine  I  should  want  her  to  stay  with  me  always  and  al- 
ways." 

"  Don't  talk  like  that,  little  kid."  There  was  something 
in  his  tone  she  had  never  heard  in  it  before.  "  You  mustn't 
talk  like  that,  you  know." 

"  I  feel  I  must,"  said  Delia,  with  valiant  simplicity. 
"  Oh,  how  can  you,  Billy!  " 

"  Drop  it,  little  kid  1 "  It  was  almost  as  if  the  simple 
words  had  struck  him.  "  I  hardly  know  how  I  can  myself. 
But  when  you've  got  to  do  a  thing  you've  jolly  well  got  to 
do  it,  whether  you  can  or  you  can't." 


2^6  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

Suddenly  he  reassumed  his  laughing,  careless  ease. 

''  You  young  beggar.  What  do  you  mean  by  catechising 
me  like  this  ?  What  do  you  mean  by  it,  eh  ?  I  shall  have 
to  box  your  young  ears,  you  know,  if  you  get  so  coxey. 
But  we  are  getting  quite  a  woman  now,  aren't  we?  We 
shall  be  falling  in  love  next." 

Billy  was  no  observer,  therefore  the  swift  change  his 
light  words  provoked  in  the  face  of  his  young  sister  passed 
without  a  challenge. 

"  Why,  hang  it  all ! "  he  cried  in  the  stress  of  sudden 
recollection,  "  you  haven't  spoken  to  auntie  yet." 

Gaily  he  drew  the  old  woman  forward  from  her  hiding- 
place  at  the  back  of  the  room.  Although  it  was  to  be 
supposed  that  Delia  would  hardly  have  scared  a  butterfly. 
Miss  Sparrow  was  very  much  afraid  of  her.  Indeed,  she 
was  so  timid  that  she  could  hardly  speak  a  word,  but  she 
was  able  to  make  a  curtsey  the  like  of  which  Delia  had 
never  seen  before. 

Delia  found  herself  regarding  the  shrinking  face  so  pale 
and  unhappy,  with  the  same  wonder  and  irresolution  as 
she  had  regarded  Alice.  And  in  spite  of  the  disparity  in 
their  years,  she  felt  that  sudden  impulse  which  had  caused 
her  to  take  the  young  girl  in  her  arms.  In  the  case  of 
this  old  woman  she  found  that  she  had  done  the  same 
thing. 

"  Will  you  tell  my  mother  and  the  girls  that  I  am  going 
back  to  town  to-night?"  said  Billy,  as  Delia  prepared  to 
take  her  leave  with  the  empty  basket  in  her  hand.  "  Tell 
them  to  come  up  here  this  afternoon.  I  should  like  to  see 
them  before  I  go;  there  is  no  saying  when  we  shall  meet 
again.  And  I  had  better  say  good-bye  to  you,  little  kid, 
here  now.  I  always  knew  you  were  a  good  little  sort. 
Not  much  of  you,  eh?  but  what  there  is,  is  solid  gold,  eh, 
little  Miss  Muffet?  And  now  for  the  very  nicest  kiss 
you  have  got.  What  a  cold  cheek  you  have  got,  little 
kid.  And  not  so  rosy  as  it  was,  by  Jove.  You  must  buck 
up,  little  kid.  Mustn't  sit  so  hard  at  those  books,  eh? 
One  more  for  luck;  and  then  off  with  you — God  knows 
when  we  shall  see  one  another  again !  " 


A  LITTLE  MORAL  TEACHING  277 

He  took  Delia's  hands  in  his  own  and  looked  at  her 
with  all  the  old  beguiling  tenderness. 

With  his  last  kiss  upon  her  cheek  Delia  hastened  into 
the  open  air.  The  fear  was  upon  her  that  she  would 
break  down  before  his  beautiful  fragile  wife  who  was  so 
brave.  She  ran  into  the  sensuous  air  of  May,  heavy  and 
languorous  with  the  sun  and  the  almost  intolerable  music 
of  birds.  She  never  dared  to  stay  her  headlong  flight  until 
the  wood  and  the  hill  and  the  little  cottage  nestling  be- 
neath them  were  far  away. 

Tears  would  have  been  a  relief  now,  but  the  power  to 
shed  them  had  gone  from  her.  A  cruel  rigour  had  fas- 
tened on  her  throat;  her  brain  was  like  a  ball  of  fire. 
And  yet  its  substance  was  so  heavy  that  it  was  like  a  piece 
of  clay.  She  even  made  an  effort  to  weep  now;  but  she 
could  not  do  so. 

She  went  straight  to  her  mother  with  the  empty  basket 
and  her  tragic  face  and  gave  Billy's  message.  The  bar- 
rier of  awe  and  distrust  of  her  mother  fell  down  an  instant 
in  the  pitch  of  desperation  while  she  said : 

"  He  is  going  away  from  England  to-morrow.  He  is 
going  to  leave  his  wife;  and  it  is  because  of  his  father. 
He  did  not  tell  me  so,  but  I  know  it  is — oh!  I  know  it 
is." 

Mrs.  Broke  regarded  her  youngest  daughter  with  an  odd 
serenity.  She  read  the  horror  and  the  sorrow  that  were 
written  so  poignantly  on  her  face;  she  listened  with  calm 
patience  to  her  wild  words,  and  replied  to  them  with  the 
melancholy  of  a  judge  pronouncing  a  sentence. 

"  Yes,  Delia,  it  is  because  of  his  father.  It  must  be  a 
lesson  to  you  all." 

As  she  spoke  these  words,  her  eyes  seemed  to  dilate  in 
a  blaze  of  meaning,  somewhat  in  the  manner  of  that  fabu- 
lous jewel  which  turned  the  hearts  of  all  who  gazed  upon 
its  lustre  into  a  block  of  stone.  But  by  now  Delia  was 
in  no  condition  to  heed,  and  the  analogy  between  her 
brother's  case  and  her  own,  which  her  mother  had  in- 
tended to  strike  home,  had  not  the  power  to  pierce  her. 

"  It  is  cruel,  it  is  unjust !  "  she  cried,  transfigured  by  her 


278  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

grief.  "  Alice  is  so  sweet  and  beautiful  and  good !  It  is 
cruel,  it  is  wicked  to  make  her  suffer ! " 

Her  mother  was  astonished.  Delia  was  positively  the 
last  creature  in  the  world  of  whom  such  an  outburst  was 
to  be  expected.  It  made  an  unwelcome  precedent  in  the 
history  of  her  daughters'  lives.  And  this  child,  too,  the 
one  with  the  least  initiative,  the  least  force  of  character! 

"  Delia,  I  must  ask  you  to  be  silent." 

"  Billy  has  resigned  his  commission,"  she  went  on,  with 
a  dreary  wildness.  "  He  is  giving  up  everything ;  he  is 
leaving  his  wife.     He  is " 

"  Delia,  you  can  go." 

She  could  not  escape  the  dominating  glance,  and  the 
old  fear  of  that  implacable  will  reasserted  itself.  It 
strangled  the  words  on  her  lips.  With  a  little  cry  of  hor- 
ror she  ran  from  the  room. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

PARIAH    IN   THE   NAME  OF   LOVE 

IT  was  not  until  the  afternoon  that  Delia  was  able  to 
find  her  five  sisters.  They  had  taken  luncheon  at  an 
agricultural  show.  Ultimately  she  found  them  assembled 
in  full  conclave  over  the  teacups  in  their  common  room, 
talking  horses  and  frocks.  As  soon  as  she  entered  she 
cried : 

"  Billy  is  at  the  cottage,  and  he  wants  to  see  you  all  to 
say  good-bye.     He  is  leaving  England  to-morrow." 

The  first  glances  her  sisters  gave  her  were  those  of  be- 
wilderment: her  words  were  so  wild,  her  voice  so  un- 
steady. Joan  was  the  first  to  recover  herself;  or  over- 
come perhaps  by  so  momentous  a  crisis,  they  did  not  trust 
themselves  to  hold  thoughts  of  their  own,  until  they  had 
received  the  sanction  of  their  natural  leader. 

Even  Joan  shivered  a  little,  but  her  mouth  was  very  set, 
and  her  face  reminded  them  strangely  of  their  father's 
at  the  moment  he  had  issued  the  decree. 

"  You  must  leave  this  room,  Delia,  until  we  have  taken 
tea.     We  cannot  submit  to  disobedience  from  you." 

"  Mother  sent  me,"  said  Delia,  with  wild  defiance. 

"  You  know  that  father  had  forbidden  his  name  to  be 
mentioned." 

"  In  his  presence,"  said  Delia  wildly. 

"  We  should  act  when  he  is  absent  just  as  though  he 
were  present.  If  you  have  not  enough  self-respect  to  do 
that,  we  cannot  have  you  here.     Leave  us,  Delia." 

"  I  will  speak  first ;  I  must  speak  first !  Billy  goes  away 
from  England  to-morrow.  He  wishes  to  see  you  all,  and 
if  you  do  not  go  to  him  now  you  may  never  see  him 
again." 

279 


28o  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

Joan  rose,  put  down  her  cup,  opened  the  door,  and  stood 
beside  it. 

"  Delia,''  she  said  in  a  low  voice,  "  I  insist  on  your 
leaving  this  room ;  and  you  are  not  to  enter  it  again  until 
you  have  permission.'' 

Delia  withdrew.  She  went  up  to  her  bedroom,  but  soon 
the  confinement  of  four  walls  became  intolerable.  The 
feeling  was  upon  her  that  life  was  pressing  her  to  death. 
She  must  have  more  space  in  which  to  breathe,  in  which 
to  think.  Bareheaded  as  she  was,  she  went  downstairs 
and  out  of  doors  into  the  freshness  and  peace  of  the  even- 
ing. She  crossed  the  lawn,  already  ghostlike  in  its  mantle 
of  dew,  into  the  green  meadows  cooling  slowly  from  the 
heat  of  the  day.  Cattle  lowed  from  the  fields,  hedge- 
crickets  made  their  little  noises,  birds  uttered  their  even- 
ing notes ;  there  was  the  sound  of  a  thousand  insect  voices, 
yet  over  and  above  all  these  was  the  peace  of  a  hundred 
thousand  years. 

To  Delia  in  her  unquietness  the  great  peace  of  God  was 
like  a  balm;  but  not  even  the  majesty  of  a  sunset  falling 
on  green  fields  :could  assuage  the  wild  sorrow  by  which  she 
was  overborne.  She  was  mute  with  grief ;  but  she  had  an 
almost  unconquerable  desire  to  bury  her  face  in  the 
swathes  of  lush  grass  clad  icily  with  dew. 

What  had  her  brother  done  and  the  girl  he  loved,  that 
he  should  be  treated  as  an  outcast  ?  What  taint  lurked  in 
love  itself  that  those  who  were  held  in  its  thrall  should  be 
punished  thus?  Was  it  a  crime,  the  violation  of  some 
secret  law,  for  one  human  creature  to  love  another? 

There  was  the  example  of  her  own  case.  She,  in  the 
desire  of  her  spirit,  had  dared  to  love,  but  how  bitterly 
had  the  act  been  visited  upon  her!  She  was  condemned 
to  a  perpetual  hungering  torment  that  nought  could  ap- 
pease, a  torturing  deprecation  of  self  that  nothing  could 
heal.  And  even  could  she,  like  her  brother,  have  brought 
her  love  to  its  consummation,  she  saw  the  price  at  which 
it  would  have  been  obtained.  The  scorn  of  those  she  held 
dear  would  have  fallen  with  equal  heaviness  upon  her. 

She  remembered  the  strength  and  the  courage  of  this 


PARIAH  IN  THE  NAME  OF  LOVE         281 

beloved  brother.  Why  was  she  incapable  of  such  fortitude 
as  his  ?  Ah !  but  then  his  was  the  requital  of  love.  Well 
might  his  heart  be  upheld  in  high  endurance. 

Her  wandering  feet  strayed  far  across  the  fields  in  the 
direction  in  which  the  cottage  lay.  As  soon  as  she  realized 
its  nearness  she  turned  and  went  back.  Intensely  she 
longed  to  see  that  beloved  brother  again.  But  she  did  not 
dare.  It  would  shatter  her  to  look  upon  him  again.  They 
were  a  pair  of  outcasts.  The  hands  of  those  they  held 
dear  were  now  uplifted  against  them.  They  were  pariah 
in  the  name  of  love. 

Thus  she  turned  from  the  cottage,  and  in  utter  self- 
abandonment  bent  her  steps  the  other  way.  Chance  took 
her  towards  that  tower,  from  whose  crazy  heights  she  had 
been  delivered  by  the  arms  of  one  when  the  jaws  of  death 
were  open  below  to  receive  her. 

Many  times  since  that  April  afternoon  had  she  put  the 
question  to  herself:  Why,  if  she  had  no  existence  for 
him;  why,  if  she  was  no  more  to  him  than  a  stone,  or  a 
tree,  or  a  blade  of  grass — why  had  he  risked  his  life  for 
hers?  Surely  he,  whose  life  was  developed  so  highly, 
would  have  had  too  keen  a  sense  of  its  value  to  imperil  it 
for  a  whim.  And  yet  how  much  more  merciful  it  would 
have  been  to  let  her  perish. 

Perhaps  it  was  not  chance  after  all  that  was  leading  her 
to  that  wild  scene.  Or  chance  may  be  only  a  name  for  a 
number  of  subtle  agencies  all  working  in  secret  to  a  pre- 
destined end.  She  was  going  to  the  ruin  in  an  instinctive, 
involuntary  manner;  and  yet  who  shall  say  she  was  not 
aware  of  what  she  did  ?  The  dizzy  heights  that  rose  there 
gauntly  in  the  dusk  were  the  only  objects  to  which  life 
now  attached  a  meaning.  They  filled  her  eyes,  and  through 
the  mists  of  the  evening  called  her  to  receive  the  consola- 
tion they  alone  could  bestow.  And  in  the  weary  spirit 
there  was  a  yearning,  vague,  irrational  almost  too  im- 
palpable to  be  expressed.  It  was  a  desire  to  lay  her  throb- 
bing temples  on  cold  stone,  there  may  have  been  a  promise 
of  the  eternal  quietness,  of  the  ultimate  peace  for  every 
living  thing  when  at  last  it  lays  down  the  burden  that  has 


282  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

grown  too  heavy  to  bear,  in  those  upright  walls  covered 
with  ivy  and  years,  on  which  poor  old  Time  himself  was 
allowed  to  rest  like  one  who  is  tired. 

The  sun  had  vanished;  the  wonderful  evening  of  the 
early  summer  was  deepening  rapidly  to  dusk.  The  dew 
was  on  the  fields,  a  pale,  faint  curtain ;  it  hung  before  her 
as  she  walked  enfolding  hedge  and  pasture.  The  small 
chill  moon  and  a  few  faint  stars  were  in  the  sky;  the 
distant  wind  walked  softly  in  the  valley.  Hardly  an  am- 
ber of  light  was  left  when  she  climbed  up  the  familiar 
hill  into  the  shadow  of  the  ruin.  The  deep  reflection  that 
it  cast  made  it  almost  invisible;  while  too  much  was  she 
wounded  by  intolerable  memories  to  discern  a  vague  mass, 
a  dark  something  outlined  in  mirk  against  a  wall  of 
ivy. 

In  her  obsession  she  approached  within  a  few  yards  of 
it,  and,  bareheaded  as  she  was,  pressed  her  aching  head 
against  the  ruin.  The  first  touch  of  the  cold  stone  brought 
relief.  The  tears  burst  out  of  her  heart.  In  the  first 
ecstasy  of  feeling  them  flow  once  again  she  surrendered 
herself  to  a  strange  orgy  of  passion,  and  craved  that  she 
might  weep  to  death.  But  soon  the  sense  of  oblivion 
was  invaded  by  a  voice.  It  was  as  though  experience  was 
repeating  itself.  It  was  as  if  some  pregnant  incident  of 
an  existence  in  some  far-off  aeon  too  remote  for  the  senses 
to  accept,  was  flowing  back  into  memory.  To  Delia  the 
voice  was  the  faint  voice  of  a  phantom  floating  among 
the  winds  of  the  glebe. 

"  Alas !  alas !  "  were  the  words  of  the  voice. 

By  now  there  was  a  quality  in  it  that  seemed  to  arrest 
the  beating  of  her  heart.  She  looked  round  wildly,  and 
was  able  to  discern  the  dim  yet  luminous  outlines  of  a 
face  she  had  never  looked  to  see  again.  She  uttered  a  cry 
like  a  little  hunted  animal.  The  next  instant  she  was 
encompassed  strongly,  with  the  tip  of  her  nose,  the  line 
of  her  lips,  and  the  point  of  her  chin  all  huddled  together 
against  something  breathing  and  responsive. 

She  was  content  to  close  her  eyes  and  lie  there  captive. 
Her  heart  had  resumed  its  motions,  but  now  it  pattered 


PARIAH  IN  THE  NAME  OF  LOVE         283 

quick  and  little,  like  a  bird's  when,  after  being  driven 
hard  about  a  greenhouse,  it  is  caught  and  held  in  the  hand. 
But  in  the  wild  flutterings  of  her  spirit  there  was  no  de- 
sire for  escape.  She  had  no  wish  other  than  never  to 
emerge  from  the  arms  that  kept  her.  In  the  ecstasy  of 
feeling  them  about  her  she  closed  her  eyes  and  craved  she 
might  never  open  them  again. 

Minutes  passed  without  speech. 

"  Alas !  alas !  "     The  words  were  repeated. 

She  still  hung  in  his  arms,  heeding  nothing. 

"  Alas,  poor  wild  little  bird ! "  he  said,  sensible  of 
the  motions  of  her  heart  as  it  beat  through  her  print 
dress. 

He  pressed  his  lips  upon  the  wet  cold  hair. 

"  Oh !  why  have  you  come  like  this,  and  in  such  a  sea- 
son? You  are  overborne,  you  poor  wild  bird  beaten 
against  stone  by  stress  of  weather.  Or,  no,  your  pulses 
flutter  like  those  of  a  lamb  that  has  been  driven  till  it 
dies." 

She  still  clung  to  him  with  all  her  strength,  fearing  in 
some  desperate  way  that  when  she  released  him  he  would 

go- 

"  You  went  away — ^you  left  me,  and  I — I  felt  I  could 
not  live."  f 

**  But  I  come  back  to  you  now." 

"  You  will  not  go  from  me  again." 

"  Never,  never !  " 

"  I  thought  you  had  gone  away  and  that  you  would  never 
return.     Oh !  I  could  not  bear  it !  " 

"  You  have  suffered,"  he  said  gravely  pitiful. 

Her  lips  here  yielded  to  his. 

"  I  have  been  weak,"  he  said.  "  You  make  me  begin 
to  see  that  I  did  not  know  you,  even  as  I  did  not  know 
myself.  But  I  must  tell  my  story,  in  the  hope  that  it  may 
help  you  to  forgive  me." 

Delia  strained  to  him  closer. 

"  Almost  from  the  first  day  of  our  coming  together  I 
saw  how  careful  I  must  be ;  and  as  the  weeks  went  by  I 
grew  afraid.     I   did  not  know  myself.     You   see  I  am 


284  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

speaking  out  all  that  is  in  my  mind,  for  there  can  be  no 
secret  between  us  now." 

Delia  tucked  the  point  of  her  chin  deeper  into  his 
coat. 

*'  At  first,  you  see,  you  had  not  this  great  meaning  for 
me.  You  were  the  first  specimen  of  womanhood  of  a 
rare  variety  I  had  seen;  and  I  suppose  I  was  Professor 
Dryasdust  looking  at  your  wonder  and  your  mystery  un- 
der a  double  magnifying-glass.  At  least,  that  was  how  it 
seemed  at  first.  You  were  an  enormously  interesting 
specimen,  but  you  did  not  fill  my  nights  and  days.  But 
then,  after  a  while,  you  grew  into  something  else." 

She  lay  half  swooning  on  his  coat. 

"  After  that  I  began  to  know  you  for  what  you  were. 
I  began  to  carry  away  the  sound  of  your  voice  in  my 
ears.  It  grew  like  music;  such  music  that  one  day,  as 
I  was  reading  Lycidas,  it  pronounced  the  magic  numbers 
word  by  word.  And  I  remember  that  one  calm  midnight, 
writing  in  my  attic,  the  page  became  a  mirror  in  which  I 
could  see  your  face.  There  and  then  I  threw  down  the 
pen,  and  for  a  whole  week  I  knew  not  how  to  take  it  up 
again.  But  with  all  this  I  felt  you  were  going  faster  and 
farther  than  could  I.  It  had  already  come  to  me  that  you 
had  the  greater  nature,  or  at  least  the  greater  one  in  love. 
You  see,  we  wretched  artist  people  have  only  about  a 
fifth  part  of  a  soul  to  call  our  own,  a  poor  gift,  alas!  to 
bestow  upon  a  very  woman  who  has  given  us  the  whole  of 
hers. 

"  That  was  why  I  grew  afraid.  I  must  be  wary  to  pro- 
tect you.  Therefore  when  I  went  to  London  I  was  sorely 
tried.  My  heart  had  become  the  background  of  two  great 
powers  in  the  strange  inner  world.  Nature,  the  mighty 
mother,  had  made  her  call  upon  me — yet  I  knew  myself 
to  be  the  bond  slave  of  art,  the  mighty  mistress.  And 
with  her  ever  looming  in  the  iDackground,  I  knew  not  what 
to  do.  If  ever  you  read  the  lives  of  such  as  me,  you  will 
understand  what  I  mean,  my  little  fairy  princess.  And 
so  I  deemed  the  honest  course  was  to  part  from  you  with- 
out a  hint  of  the  terrible  conflict  you  had  aroused. 


PARIAH  IN  THE  NAME  OF  LOVE        285 

"  But  that  all  lies  behind  us  now.  Whatever  I  may  have 
been  to  you  at  the  time  of  my  going  away,  within  one  short 
month  you  had  become  that  to  me,  and  more.  You  had 
entered  into  your  kingdom.  The  scheme  of  things  no 
longer  had  a  meaning  apart  from  you.  Day  and  night  I 
was  in  your  thrall.  You  were  in  my  dreams,  you  were  in 
my  world.  You  came  to  me  in  a  thousand  shapes  that 
made  your  absence  mock  me.  The  light  in  your  eyes,  the 
carriage  of  your  proud  little  head,  the  sound  of  your  feet, 
the  tones  of  your  voice — oh,  I  cannot  tell  you  how  they 
haunted  me ! 

"  And  so  at  last  I  awoke  to  find  myself  worthy.  I  had 
passed  through  the  ordeal  of  absence,  and  instead  of  be- 
coming less  to  me  you  had  become  more,  a  thousand  times 
more.  Thus  when  I  left  London  this  morning  to  spend 
a  few  days  with  my  father  at  Cuttisham,  I  resolved  that 
I  would  seek  you  and  make  my  confession.  But  I  did  not 
look  to  find  you  here.  I  cannot  tell  what  mysterious  agent 
brought  you,  because  in  the  letter  I  sent  to  you  this  morn- 
ing I  did  not  mention  time  or  place.  Above  all,  I  made 
no  reference  to  this  ruin;  indeed,  it  was  not  until  half 
an  hour  ago  that  I  thought  of  coming  here."  ^ 

"  It  is  a  mysterious  Providence,"  said  Delia  in  a  voice 
that  thrilled  him.  "  Let  us  kneel  on  this  bank  of  earth  and 
ask  God  to  help  us." 

"  Are  we  not  strong  enough  to  shape  our  own  destiny," 
said  the  young  man  in  his  power.  He  gripped  her  so 
tightly  that  she  could  have  cried  out  in  ecstasy  of  pain. 

But  the  return  of  sanity  was  bringing  its  reaction.  She 
began  to  shiver  in  the  arms  of  her  lover. 

"  Ah,  you  do  not  know,  you  do  not  know ! "  she  said 
mournfully. 

"  Are  we  not  of  the  mettle  that  grips-  the  giant  Diffi- 
culty by  the  throat  ?  "  he  vaunted.  "  You  would  hardly 
believe  how  many  times  I  have  thrown  him  to  the  ground." 

"  I  have  seen  you  do  it  once,"  she  said,  with  a  wild 
exaltation  stirring  in  her  heart.  "  I  have  seen  you  do  it 
when  no  other  in  the  world  could  do  it." 

"  It  can  be  done  again." 


i286  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"I  am  thinking  of  my  father.  You  do  not  know  my 
father." 

Her  voice  was  like  a  wail. 

"  The  name  of  that  giant  is  Convention.  Together,  in 
our  might,  I  think  we  can  do  battle  with  him  too." 

She  clung  to  his  coat  convulsively. 

"  You  do  not  fear,  my  princess  ?  " 

"  In  my  heart  I  am  a  wretched  coward." 

*'And  I  beside  you?" 

"  You  cannot  know  what  my  father  is.  Men  like  you 
cannot  understand." 

"  Will  the  ogre  kill  me  and  eat  me  for  his  supper  ?  " 

Delia  shivered  and  nestled  to  his  coat. 

"  We  will  put  on  our  invisible  coat  and  our  shoes  of 
swiftness,  and  borrow  the  sword  Excalibur,  or  get  friend 
Merlin  to  steal  it  for  us.  Be  of  good  faith,  my  fairy 
princess.  I  will  fight  any  giant  in  any  enchanted  castle, 
in  any  impenetrable  fastness  with  fiery  dragons  before 
the  mouth  of  it,  or  I  were  unworthy  to  hold  you  in  my 
arms.     Grip  tighter,  princess,  and  fear  not." 

"  If  I  only  had  courage ! "  said  Delia. 

She  was  shivering  still  at  the  remembrance  of  her 
brother's  fate. 

"  You  shall  not  fear  while  you  lie  against  my  heart. 
I  would  there  was  light  by  which  you  could  read  my 
face." 

By  virtue  of  these  high-hearted  speeches  her  cheeks 
began  suddenly  to  glow.  She  saw  him  as  he  swooned 
upon  the  bank  of  earth  with  the  blood  upon  his  hands. 
Words  such  as  these  were  his  heroic  birthright.  In  an- 
other they  had  been  idle  vaunts,  but  in  him,  the  happy 
warrior,  they  were  proper  to  his  quality. 

"  I  am  not  afraid,"  she  said,  speaking  very  low. 

"  You  were  not  mine,  princess,  were  it  otherwise." 

"  But  must  you — must  you  see  my  father  ?  " 

"  Yes,  indeed.  I  must  beard  that  ogre  with  my  good 
sword  in  my  hand." 

She  trembled  painfully. 


PARIAH  IN  THE  NAME  OF  LOVE         287 

"  How  cold  you  are !  And  how  your  poor  heart  beats ! 
Come,  princess,  you  shall  not  fear." 

"  Oh,  but  my  father  is  terrible." 

"  And  we  ?     Are  we  not  terrible  also  ?  " 

Again  she  closed  her  eyes  and  lay  back  shuddering  and 
buried  her  head  in  his  coat.  Again,  with  extreme  delicacy 
he  kissed  the  cold  hair.  Silence  held  them  for  a  while. 
He  then  put  off  his  tone  of  romantic  lightness  for  one  a 
little  more  matter  of  fact,  as  became  one  in  whose  veins 
the  Saxon  was  mingled  with  the  Celt. 

"  And  now,"  he  said,  "  suppose  we  are  material  ?  I 
think  we  can  safely  say  the  world  has  not  ear-marked 
us  to  come  together,  but  accidents  of  birth  and  fortune 
have  no  lien  upon  our  immortal  souls.  Now  I  shall  be 
able  to  provide  a  sort  of  fairy  palace  for  you,  princess, 
if  your  aristocratic  spirit  can  stoop  to  the  region  of  shall 
we  say — South  Kensington?  You  see  I  am  to  get  seven 
hlindred  pounds  a  year  from  the  Review;  I  enjoy  a  small 
subsidy  from  my  university;  and  publishers,  grim  ogres 
all,  are  deigning  to  take  an  interest  in  the  little  book  I 
gave  to  the  world  a  month  ago.  Therefore  still  continu- 
ing to  degrade  ourselves  with  the  material,  there  should 
be  the  means  to  provide  you  with  curds  and  whey  and  an 
occasional  bunch  of  flowers  newly  from  the  country, 
which  I  have  always  read  is  all  that  fairy  princesses  require 
to  support  existence.  And  now  the  hour  is  late.  I  can 
feel  your  hands  are  ice;  you  have  no  hat  and  coat;  your 
dress  is  very  thin." 

At  the  mention  of  the  hour  Delia  leapt  up  In  terror. 

"  Oh  \  what  is  the  time  ?  I  had  quite  forgotten.  And 
I  have  not  been  home  to  dinner.  I  shall  be  scolded  dread- 
fully." 

He  struck  a  match  and  read  his  watch. 

"  Five  minutes  to  eleven." 

"  I  must  fly." 

"  Alas !  poor  Cinderella !  " 

Long  ago  it  had  become  quite  dark.  They  picked  their 
path  through  the  bracken  on  the  steep  hillside,  and  under 


288  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

the  shyest,  faintest  shred  of  moon  made  their  way  across 
the  dew-soaked  meadows  to  the  house.  A  clock  from  a 
neighbouring  village  told  the  hour  of  eleven.  Delia's 
heart  sank  as  she  counted  the  strokes. 

"  Oh !  what  will  happen  ?  "  she  cried  despairingly. 

"  Fear  not,  princess,"  said  the  deep  voice  at  her  side. 
"  Should  we  walk  now  into  the  ogre's  parlour  hand  in 
hand?" 

"  Oh,  no,  no,  no !  To-night  I  am  sure  I  could  not  bear 
what  would  follow.  I  think  you  will  never  be  able  to 
understand  my  father,  and  my  mother  also,  and  my  sis- 
ters worst  of  all !  " 

"  I  think  you  are  right,"  he  said ;  and  his  calmness 
seemed  to  add  intensity  to  her  despair.  "  We  must  be 
wise  and  choose  the  hour." 

"  Ah,  you  do  not  know,"  she  moaned. 

"  Fear  nothing,  princess." 

"  You  are  so  much  stronger,  so  much  braver  than  I," 
said  Delia,  peering  into  his  face  with  the  aid  of  the  un- 
certain light  of  the  moon.  And  her  own  eyes  glowed  un- 
til they  were  like  the  stars  that  looked  down  upon  her. 
"  Even  in  love  you  are  so  much  greater  than  I,  and  yet 
my  love  drove  me  to  the  verge  of  despair." 

"  You  will  never  doubt  again,  princess  ?  " 

"  Never,  never  while  I  live !  " 

"  I  have  not  doubted  nor  ever  will.  A  kiss  and  then 
good  night — ^here  by  this  noble  tree  on  this  fair  spot  of 
earth.  To-morrow  or  the  next  day  I  will  beard  the  ogre  in 
his  lair;  but  come  what  may;  come  shine,  come  hail,  we 
pledge  ourselves  for  ever !  " 

"Forever!" 

She  was  locked  a  wild  instant  in  a  last  embrace. 

They  parted  under  the  young  moon  and  went  their  ways. 
Delia  was  bareheaded  and  thinly  clad.  The  damp  of  the 
night  had  penetrated  her  stockings  and  shoes;  her  skirts 
were  a  sop  where  their  edges  had  swept  the  dew  from  the 
fields  through  which  they  had  trailed.  The  clock  in  the 
church  in  the  village  told  the  half  hour  after  eleven.  She 
had  had  no  food  since  the  middle  of  the  day,  and  that  very 


PARIAH  IN  THE  NAME  OF  LOVE         289 

little ;  many  hours  she  had  been  exposed  to  the  chill  of  the 
night,  but  she  was  neither  cold,  nor  hungry,  nor  afflicted 
with  weariness.  Nor  was  she  heavy  of  heart.  There 
was  an  exaltation  in  her  veins  that  for  the  moment  placed 
her  beyond  all  calamities  of  the  flesh. 

When  at  last  the  form  of  her  lover  had  been  engulfed 
by  the  shadows  of  an  immense  wall  of  trees,  Delia  turned 
to  go  indoors.  She  might  have  had  fear  in  her  soul  and 
in  her  limbs  weariness ;  hunger  and  other  infirmities  might 
have  looked  within  the  slight  frame.  But  she  was  sen- 
sible of  none  of  these  things.  There  was  a  magical  secret 
in  her  heart,  so  that  she  seemed  no  longer  to  have  feet 
of  clay  rooted  in  the  mire  of  the  world. 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

TWO  WOMEN 

TO  Delia's  relief  she  discovered  the  great  door  of  the 
entrance-hall  to  be  ajar.  So  late  was  the  hour  for 
such  an  early  retiring  household  that  she  had  been  afraid 
she  would  have  to  arouse  it  if  she  was  to  gain  admittance 
that  night. 

The  fact  that  the  hall-door  was  undone  was  remarkable 
and  of  a  piece  with  the  events  of  that  evening.  But  look- 
ing a  little  farther  she  found  the  explanation  of  it.  As 
soon  as  she  entered  the  old  butler  in  a  pair  of  carpet 
slippers  and  with  a  candle  in  his  hand,  emerged  very 
softly  from  the  dark  interior.  He  placed  a  finger  to  his 
lips. 

"  Be  very  quiet,  miss.  They  all  thought  you  were  in 
your  bedroom  at  dinner.  They  thought  you  were  unwell. 
They  have  not  found  you  out,  and  they  won't  if  you  go 
up  very  quietly." 

"  You  are  very  good  to  me,  dear  Porson.  How  did  you 
know  I  was  out  ?  " 

"  I  had  a  sort  of  instinct,  miss.  You  were  not  at  the 
dinner-table.  And  I  learned  from  Walters  that  you  were 
not  in  your  room.  You  will  find  a  fire  there,  and  a  plate 
of  cold  meat  and  a  basin  of  warm  milk.  If  I  may  take  the 
liberty  of  saying  so,  miss,  I  have  noticed  you  have  not 
been  quite  yourself  for  some  time." 

"  You  are  too  good  to  me,  dear  Porson." 

"  Now,  miss,  if  you  go  very  quiet  past  your  mother's 
door,  no  one  will  know  of  this.  Even  Mrs.  Smith  doesn't 
know." 

The  old  fellow  lighted  Delia  to  her  bedroom,  bearing 
the  candle  cautiously  and  solemnly  before  her. 

290 


TWO  WOMEN  291 

It  was  true  that  at  the  dinner-table  her  absence  had 
excited  no  comment,  after  Joan  had  hazarded  the  remark 
that  she  might  be  unwell.  Her  mother,  who  was  late  for 
the  meal  herself,  as,  unknown  to  anybody,  she  had  been  to 
the  cottage  to  say  good-bye  to  Billy,  was  hardly  in  her 
usual  vigilant  frame  of  mind.  Besides,  she  also,  by  the 
light  of  what  had  happened  at  her  interview  with  Delia 
that  morning,  thought  she  might  be  indisposed.  And 
Broke  himself,  who  of  late  had  become  the  most  apathetic 
of  men,  hardly  spoke  a  word  throughout  the  meal,  betray- 
ing an  interest  in  nothing  beyond  the  strip  of  tablecloth 
immediately  before  him. 

Delia,  therefore,  was  spared  the  ordfeal  which  she 
dreaded.  She  drank  the  basin  of  warm  milk  gratefully, 
and  slipped  into  bed,  and  then,  for  the  first  time  for  many 
an  unhappy  night,  she  slept  the  sleep  of  youth,  of  health, 
of  weariness.     It  was  deep,  dreamless,  reconstructing. 

She  awoke  with  a  clear  heart  to  the  twitterings  of  birds 
about  her  window,  as  in  the  unintrospective  days  of  old. 
Refreshed  in  mind  and  body  she  sprang  from  her  bed. 
There  was  a  little  carol  upon  her  lips ;  the  night  of  dark- 
ness and  despair  was  past.  She  was  awakened  to  a  fresh 
and  joyous  day.  Her  spirit  was  no  longer  racked  by 
doubt.     She  was  beloved. 

In  the  sanity  of  morning,  fear  could  exist  no  more.  An 
exquisite  self-reliance  thrilled  within  her.  No  room  was 
there  for  lesser  doubts  now  that  the  crowning  one  of  all 
had  been  forever  laid  at  rest.  The  little  world  in  which 
she  had  been  bred,  which  a  few  brief  months  ago  had  been 
so  dear  to  her,  might  now  conspire  to  shoot  its  venom  at 
her  and  at  the  man  she  loved,  but  nothing,  as  it  seemed  in 
the  sovereign  light  of  this  splendid  day,  could  poison  the 
clear  fountain  whence  sprang  the  faith  that  made  them 
strong. 

She  dressed  blithely.  Singing,  she  sallied  out  to  feed 
her  pets.  Presently  she  returned  for  a  crust  of  bread  to 
gnaw  herself,  for  she  had  suddenly  made  the  discovery 
that  she  was  desperately  hungry. 

It  was  hardly  more  than  five  o'clock.     The  cold  and  pure 


292  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

morning  airs  that  swept  her  temples  now  recalled  vaguely 
to  her  mind  the  feverish  longing  that  had  possessed  her 
the  previous  evening  to  lay  her  burning  forehead  on  cold 
stone.  But  the  transactions  of  that  delirium  had  become 
little  more  than  a  dream  already.  She  was  far  too  sane 
now  to  be  able  to  look  back  upon  them  with  any  sense  of 
detail. 

She  sang  to  herself  softly  as  she  tripped  over  the  wet 
lawns.  Fate  should  contrive  its  worst,  but  the  necessary 
resolution  was  now  hers  to  stand  steadfast.  She  was  like 
her  brother  now.  Yesterday  her  complaint  had  been  that 
her  love  had  no  requital.  But  now,  like  his,  it  had  achieved 
its  consummation.  Yesterday  she  felt  she  could  never  be 
as  he  was;  she  had  awakened  now  to  learn  that  she  had 
misjudged  the  forces  of  her  heart.  This  morning  her 
strength  seemed  as  great  as  that  of  any  creature  in  the 
world. 

Her  happy  way  led  her  down  a  remote  path,  in  which 
was  a  small  summer-house  without  a  door.  Coming  upon 
it  suddenly  she  was  transfixed  by  a  figure  seated  in  it 
shrouded  in  grey  light.  It  was  Maud  Wayling.  She  was 
reading  a  book.  She  lifted  her  wonderful  grey  eyes  to 
Delia,  and  smiled  wanly. 

"  Come  and  sit  by  me,"  she  said,  "  and  take  my  hand 
and  talk  to  me.  Are  we  not  both  wayfarers  in  the  same 
dark  valley  ?  " 

Delia  was  no  longer  timid.  Ever  since  Maud  Wayling 
had  come  among  them  she,  in  common  with  her  sisters, 
had  been  in  awe  of  her.  But  this  morning  that  feeling 
and  the  self-conscious  reserve  induced  by  it  was  no  longer 
hers.  Without  hesitation  she  came  to  her.  She  was  af- 
flicted by  the  pallor  of  the  elder  girl's  face.  It  was 
strangely  cold  and  placid,  as  transparent  as  marble;  the 
dark  lines  that  had  lately  come  about  her  eyes  alone  had 
value  as  colour.  As  Delia  came  to  her  now  she  was  able 
to  read  that  proud  bosom  by  the  light  of  her  own  experi- 
ence. 

"  You  loved  him — how  you  must  have  loved !  '*     Delia's 


TWO  WOMEN  293 

voice  was  strangely  hushed,  but  there  was  a  thrill  in  it, 
almost  of  tears. 

"Yes,  I  loved  him.     And  you ?"     The  elder  girl 

gently  clasped  Delia's  hand  with  her  cold  fingers. 

"  Yes,  yes — but  it  has  pleased  God  to  be  very  kind  to 
me.  I  am  very  happy  now.  But  perhaps  I  ought  not  to 
tell  you  this — perhaps  it  is  cruel.  Perhaps  I  ought  not  to 
speak  of  my  happiness  when  you  are  so  unhappy.  Please 
forgive  me,  dear  Maud." 

"  I  am  so  glad  to  see  you  happy."  The  elder  girl  kissed 
Delia  gravely.  "  I  did  not  dare  to  speak  to  you,  but  I 
have  prayed  for  you." 

*'  Oh,"  said  Delia,  with  a  pang,  "  it  has  been  base  of  me 
not  to  read  you  better.  Oh,  but  I  see  now!  We  have 
been  walking  hand  in  hand  in  the  abyss.  I  have  not  been 
alone  in  the  darkness.  At  least,  dear  Maud,  if  others  do 
not  mourn  for  you,  I  shall  always.  I  do  not  know  why 
my  happiness  has  iDeen  restored  to  me  when  you,  when 
you  who  are  in  every  way  so  much  nobler,  have  had  your 
happiness  taken  from  you  like  this.  It  does  not  seem 
just." 

"  I  am  trying  to  form  the  habit  of  not  complaining  of 
fate,"  said  the  beautiful,  unhappy  girl ;  ''  but  the  task  is 
heavy.  As  you  say,  it  does  not  seem  just.  But  my  life 
has  been  too  self-absorbed.  It  is  meet  that  I  should  pay 
for  it." 

Delia,  in  spite  of  an  inward  ecstasy,  was  filled  with  pain. 
In  regarding  such  a  distress  she  beheld  a  state  of  mind 
from  which  she  had  escaped  miraculously.  This  aloof 
proud  woman  was  being  seared  by  a  suffering  she  under- 
stood too  well.  Human  nature,  it  seemed,  was  much  the 
same  wherever  you  found  it. 


CHAPTER  XXX 

IN   THE   MAELSTROM 

WHEN  Delia  came  in  to  breakfast  her  mother  looked 
at  her  searchingly.  She  did  not  speak,  but  the 
glance  seemed  full  of  meaning.  The  thought  swept  over 
Delia  suddenly  that  her  lover  had  posted  a  letter  to  her 
the  previous  day,  and  that  as  yet  it  had  not  come  into  her 
hands.  A  pang  seized  her.  It  was  born  of  the  conviction 
that  the  letter  had  been  intercepted. 

From  that  moment  reaction  came  upon  her.  The 
buoyant  fearlessness  of  the  early  morning  began  slowly 
to  decline.  Reflection,  moreover,  brought  foreboding  in 
its  train.  What  would  happen  when  her  lover  came  to 
see  her  father?  She  hardly  dared  to  frame  the  sinister 
question.  Her  mother,  in  the  first  days  of  his  coming 
to  that  house,  had  shown  herself  to  be  capable  of  making 
cruel  references  to  him.  As  for  her  father — him  to  whom 
her  every  instinct  had  led  her  to  look  as  a  natural  friend 
and  protector — after  his  treatment  of  the  brother  beloved 
by  them  all,  who  should  say  in  what  sort  he  would  be 
moved  to  deal  with  her ! 

The  consequences  that  might  ensue  upon  her  lover's 
coming  to  that  house  grew  intolerable  to  consider.  The 
subject  induced  a  state  of  terrible  restlessness  and  sus- 
pense. She  must  do  something,  go  somewhere.  Accord- 
ingly she  went  to  the  cottage  to  see  her  brother's  young 
wife.  Had  she  not  promised  Billy  to  go  and  see  her 
often?  By  so  doing  there  was  a  sense  of  fulfilling  a  duty 
that  had  been  imposed  upon  her;  also  there  was  a  long- 
ing within  her  to  acquire  the  ^  first-hand  experiences  of 
those  in  the  vortex  of  this  passion  of  love. 

294 


IN  THE  MAELSTROM  295 

At  the  cottage,  although  the  sunshine  still  bathed  the 
clean  walls,  and  in  the  wood  behind  the  birds  still  piped 
their  spring  notes,  the  spirit  that  yesterday  presided  was 
no  longer  there.  All  things  were  as  they  were,  yet  the 
genius  of  the  place  was  changed.  To-day  all  things  were 
flat  and  tame  and  palled  upon  the  heart,  where  yesterday 
they  were  quick  with  life  and  full  of  a  memorable 
fragrance.  At  the  moment  Delia  entered  the  spotless 
kitchen  she  was  afflicted  with  his  sense  of  loss.  She 
was  haunted  by  the  absence  of  a  laughing  presence,  a  pair 
of  impudent,  tormenting  arms.  And  her  feeling  of  be- 
reavement was  reflected  poignantly  in  the  faces  of  the 
young  woman  and  the  old. 

Alice  came  to  greet  her  with  a  hungry  eagerness,  and  a 
faint  cry  upon  her  lips.  She  had  already  learned  to  over- 
come her  timidity  in  regard  to  Delia.  She  was  Billy's 
sister ;  and  her  love  for  him  was  a  complement  to,  not  a 
rival  of,  her  own.  But  this  morning  the  young  wife  was 
wan  with  despair. 

"  I  have  ruined  him,"  she  said  in  a  slow,  hard  voice. 

Delia  took  her  in  her  arms  tenderly. 

"  No,  oh,  no !  "  she  found  the  courage  to  say.  "  A  love 
like  yours  could  never  do  that." 

"  It  is  because  of  me  he  is  driven  away,"  said  the  young 
wife.  "  I  was  wicked  and  thought  only  of  myself,  or  I 
should  have  known  that  it  must  be  so.  It  was  not  possible 
for  me  to  be  the  fit  companion  of  my  husband.  I  ought 
to  have  known  that,  and  saved  him  from  the  ruin  he  could 
not  foresee." 

^*  It  is  not  ruin,"  said  Delia.  "  He  will  soon  come  back 
to  you.  His  love  for  you  will  be  greater,  if  it  were  pos- 
sible for  his  love  to  be  greater,  and  he  will  no  longer  be 
dependent  on  others." 

"  There  is  something  here  in  my  heart  that  tells  me  he 
will  not  return.  I  have  been  base  and  wicked,  and  God 
will  know  how  to  punish  me.  I  have  thought  only  of  my- 
self. I  did  not  think  of  those  who  were  near  and  dear 
to  him ;  of  you  and  your  sisters ;  of  the  beautiful  lady 
who  loved  him,  of  the  mother  who  has  been  so  kind  to 


296  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

me,  and  the  poor  father  I  have  made  so  unhappy.  I  do 
not  know  how  any  of  you  can  forgive  me;  I  know  that 
God  will  not/* 

The  hard  tones  of  her  despair  were  as  so  many  blows 
upon  Delia's  heart.  The  words  of  consolation  welling  out 
of  it  were  forced  back  ruthlessly. 

"  When  your  brother  gave  me  his  love,"  said  the  young 
wife,  "  my  thoughts  were  of  him  and  of  myself  and  of  all 
that  we  were  to  one  another.  And  when  he  asked  me  to 
be  his  wife  I  could  only  see  the  bearing  it  would  have  on 
my  own  life,  and  on  my  aunt's.  I  saw  no  farther  then.  I 
could  not  see  you  all  in  the  background,  all  as  full  of  un- 
happiness  as  I  was  full  of  joy.  Poverty  and  hard  work 
have  made  me  cruel  and  self-seeking.  I  have  ruined  him 
who  loved  me  because  I  would  not  deny  myself  his  love. 
But  God  will  punish  me." 

The  fragile  creature  quivered  like  a  leaf  in  the  wind. 

"  He  will  come  back  soon,"  said  Delia  valiantly.  "  He 
will  come  back  very  rich,  and  my  father  and  my  mother 
and  my  sisters  will  be  so  happy  that  they  will  be  very 
grateful  to  you." 

"  He  will  never  come  back,"  said  the  young  wife.  "  I 
have  been  so  wicked  that  God  will  never  allow  him  to  re- 
turn. I  shall  not  be  allowed  another  moment  of  happi- 
ness. I  have  had  my  hour  and  it  was  more  than  I  de- 
served ! " 

"  You  have  not  been  wicked,"  said  Delia.  "  Only  heart- 
less and  unworthy  people  could  say  that.  Love  is  not 
wickedness.  If  we  are  punished  when  we  love  worthily 
those  who  punish  us  are  unjust." 

A  prophetic  fire  broke  forth  so  suddenly  from  the  lips 
of  Billy's  young  sister,  that  Alice  recoiled  from  her  and 
looked  wonderingly  into  the  vivid  eyes.  The  brooding 
depths  she  beheld  were  the  haunts  of  mysteries  that  her 
own  brief  but  highly  wrought  experience  dimly  enabled 
her  to  apprehend. 

"  Those  were  my  thoughts  but  a  few  weeks  ago,"  said 
Alice,  *'  but  I  was  blind  then  and  I  could  not  see.  Believe 
me^  dear  Miss  Broke,  such  a  blindness  is  wrong.     If  we 


IN  THE  MAELSTROM  297 

buy  our  love  at  the  price  of  the  happiness  of  others  surely 
our  selfishness  cannot  be  forgiven.  My  love  for  Billy 
and  my  poverty  caused  me  to  be  blind  and  callous.  I 
could  not  see  the  truth,  and  I  did  not  wish.  I  was  be- 
loved and  I  asked  no  more.  But  the  scales  are  taken 
from  my  eyes  by  the  God  who  knew  all  the  time  what  I 
was  doing.  Yes,  Miss  Broke,  He  knew  what  I  was  doing. 
And  now  He  has  taken  away  the  happiness  I  have  gained 
so  wrongfully,  and  because  of  that  it  will  never  be  given 
back.     God  knows  I  am  unworthy." 

The  hard  poignancy  that  underlay  the  soft  accents 
seemed  to  bruise  Delia.  Her  mother,  in  the  first  interview 
with  the  old  aunt,  had  had  a  similar  experience. 

No  words  of  consolation,  however  tenderly  and  valiantly 
conveyed,  could  avail  against  the  conviction  of  Alice  that 
an  offended  Deity  was  dealing  in  person  with  her  affairs. 
And  worse,  such  were  the  clear  eyes  that  anguish  had 
given  her,  she  could  trace  in  Delia's  eager  attempts  to 
bring  her  comfort  something  of  the  source  from  which 
they  sprang.  Such  passionate  speeches  of  consolation 
could  hardly  arise  from  a  purely  impersonal  desire  to  make 
less  her  pain.  Too  palpably  the  words  leaped  forth  under 
the  goad  of  a  fierce  impulse.  Alice,  by  the  light  of  her 
experience,  could  too  surely  read  the  cause  of  the  flaming 
cheeks,  the  throbbing  tones.  Her  wise  eyes  saw  that 
Delia  was  scorched  already  by  the  sacred  flame. 

"  Forgive  me,  dear  Miss  Broke,  but  I  beseech  you  to 
heed  what  has  fallen  upon  me." 

Delia  turned  cold  and  faint.  A  feeling  of  terror  was 
overspreading  her. 

"  But,  oh,  Alice,  how  can  we  injure  others  if  our  love 
is  worthy?" 

The  young  wife  clasped  her  hands  and  closed  her  eyes 
like  one  who  suffers  an  unendurable  pain. 

"  Ah,  dear  Miss  Broke,  those  were  my  words  only  a 
month  ago ! " 

"  I  will  repeat  them,"  said  Delia  wildly,  seizing  the 
hands  of  Alice. 

"  The  thought  is  too  hard  for  us  to  bear,"  said  Alice. 


298  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  We  dare  not  think  that  a  love  like  ours  should  injure 
others." 

"Oh,  I  will  not  believe  it!" 

*' Have  I  not  ruined  your  brother?" 

"  No,"  said  Delia  fiercely,  "  it  is  not  true." 

"  Has  not  your  father  always  been  kind  and  generous  ? 
If  there  was  not  clear  cause  of  offence  in  me,  surely  so 
just  a  man  would  not  have  turned  against  him.  It  is  be- 
cause he  knows  I  am  unworthy;  and  indeed  I  am,  else 
never  in  the  selfishness  of  my  heart  would  I  have  taken 
away  from  him  I  love  more  than  it  was  possible  for  the 
love  I  bore  him  to  repay." 

Against  such  a  desolation  nothing  'could  avail.  All 
prophecy  that  Delia  made  of  her  brother's  speedy  and 
prosperous  return  fell  upon  deaf  ears.  Nothing  could 
change  that  arid  despair.  Delia  could  not  bear  to  stay 
and  witness  this  grief  that  lay  too  deep  for  tears.  Prom- 
ising to  return  the  next  day  and  the  next,  and  for  many  a 
one  to  come,  as  though  in  such  a  childlike  willingness  to 
heal  some  measure  of  relief  might  lurk,  Delia  left  the 
cottage  faint  of  spirit  and  cold  of  heart. 

New  doubts  rose  up  in  that  impressionable  mind.  In 
the  presence  of  a  grief  so  barren,  love  itself  lost  some- 
thing of  its  radiance.  Was  it  after  all  a  wicked  act  to 
fall  in  love?  Her  own  case  had  a  terrible  parallel  in  that 
of  the  distraught  young  wife.  There  were  those  who 
were  near  and  dear  to  her  it  behoved  her  to  consider. 
There  were  the  father  and  the  mother  and  the  sisters 
who  would  be  stricken  by  her  conduct.  Was  not  Alice 
right?  There  was  the  duty  she  owed  to  others.  She 
must  yield  her  lover.  Oh,  God,  she  must  yield  him  to  the 
prejudices  of  those  who  held  her  dear! 

The  thought  was  too  bitter  to  contemplate.  She  walked 
faster  down  the  hill  to  the  green  fields,  faster  and  faster 
she  walked  to  the  birds  and  the  flowers  and  the  sweet- 
breathing  earth.  She  must  outpace  that  thought,  run 
from  it,  lose  it  wholly  and  for  ever.  It  must  never  find 
her  again.  Kind  God  in  heaven,  it  must  never  find  her 
again ! 


IN  THE  MAELSTROM  299 

It  is  given  to  none,  however,  to  bar  out  thought  by  the 
door  of  resolution.  The  cruel  suggestion  continued  to  re- 
cur. No  matter  whether  she  walked  or  ran  the  spectre 
was  ever  by  her  side.  If  such  an  anguish  as  that  of  the 
young  wife  at  the  cottage  was  the  fruit  of  a  pure  passion, 
must  there  not  be  some  subtle  taint  unrevealed  to  those 
who  nourished  it,  else  she  who  had  slaked  her  thirst  at 
the  Pierian  spring  could  never  awake  to  discover  that  the 
draught  had  poisoned  her  sweet  blood. 

Could  it  be  that  her  duty  to  her  kindred  was  more  sacred 
than  that  she  owed  to  her  lover  and  to  her  own  nature? 
The  self-accusing  misery  of  her  brother's  wife  haunted 
Delia  like  a  premonition  of  fate.  She  and  the  man  she 
loved  must  inevitably  stand  thus  before  the  world.  Must 
the  same  outraged  Deity  intervene  to  blast  their  lives  if 
their  unsanctioned  love  dared  to  set  the  world  at  nought? 

That  afternoon  was  to  be  dedicated  to  a  garden-party  at 
a  house  in  the  neighbourhood.  The  six  daughters  of  the 
house  of  Broke  put  on  their  white  summer  frocks,  which 
for  several  years  past  had  done  duty  on  state  occasions, 
and  set  out  in  the  ramshackle  omnibus  with  their  mother. 
Even  as  she  went  forth  with  her  sisters  dark  forebodings 
clouded  the  heart  of  Delia.  There  was  a  presumption  in 
it  which  amounted  to  certainty  that  the  man  she  loved 
would  call  upon  her  father  during  her  absence  from  home. 
High  tension  is  apt  to  breed  a  strain  of  fatalism  even  in 
well-balanced  natures;  Delia  felt  sure  her  lover  would 
come  to  her  father's  house  when  there  would  be  no  friendly 
presence  to  protect  him.  Within  the  last  few  days  she 
had  conceived  almost  a  horror  of  her  father.  In  the  revolt 
from  a  lifetime  of  blind  adoration  he  stood  forth  now  in 
her  imagination  as  a  very  ogre.  She  longed  with  all  her 
being  to  be  with  her  knight  when  he  came  to  confront  the 
giant  in  his  lair.  The  sense  that  she  was  by  might  do 
something  to  soften  his  ordeal,  although  his  courage  was 
the  noblest  thing  she  had  ever  known.  In  her  chivalrous 
heart  she  yearned  to  buckle  on  the  armour  or  to  bear  the 
spear  of  the  champion  who  was  to  contend  for  their  joint 
cause  before  the  dragon.     If  only  he  had  not  to  go  forth 


300  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

alone;  if  only  she  could  be  there  to  help  him;  if  only  it 
could  be  her  fortune  to  intercept  any  buffet  hurled  at  the 
sacred  form  of  him  who  dared  everything  for  her ! 

By  the  time  the  afternoon  came  round  she  had  a  con- 
viction that  a  grave  need  for  her  presence  in  that  house 
M^ould  arise.  So  luridly  was  the  image  of  impending  ca- 
lamity before  her  eyes  that  she  pleaded  a  headache  in  order 
to  avoid  the  garden-party.  Her  mother,  however,  was  em- 
phatic in  her  insistence  that  she  should  go  with  the  others. 
And  to  Delia  the  uncompromising  nature  of  that  insistence 
added  to  the  fact  that  her  mother  had  already  suppressed 
her  lover's  letter,  and  had  studiously  avoided  any  mention 
of  him  gave  colour  to  her  fears. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

IN   WHICH    OUR   HERO   TAKES   DOWN    HIS   BATTLE-AXE 

THERE  are  times  when  a  man  may  feel  himself  to  be 
the  victim  of  a  conspiracy  on  the  part  of  destiny. 
Misfortune  succeeds  misfortune,  until  the  most  trivial 
incidents  assume  a  tragic  guise,  and  the  commonest  inci- 
dents of  life  become  part  of  the  design  against  us. 

Broke  sat  in  his  library  that  afternoon  re-reading  for 
the  tenth  time  a  letter  that  lately  had  come  Into  his  hands. 
It  was  not  addressed  to  him  in  the  first  place,  but  that  was 
not  a  fact  to  lessen  its  significance  in  his  eyes.  It  must  be 
confessed  that  to  a  man  of  sober  mind  there  was  hardly 
a  line  in  it  which  could  be  construed  into  offence.  But 
Broke's  mind  no  longer  moved  upon  the  path  of  absolute 
sanity.  It  ran  ahead  of  itself  and  climbed  perilous  alti- 
tudes to  view  the  motives  of  others.  Other  people,  in  their 
most  ordinary  dealings  with  him  wore  a  sinister  aspect. 
Suspicion  clouded  everything;  he  was  no  longer  tolerant; 
in  peace  he  could  neither  live  nor  let  live.  There  was  a 
conspiracy  against  him;  there  was  an  anarchist  ready  to 
cast  a  bomb  inside  every  cloak  that  fluttered. 

The  world  had  laid  a  plot  to  pull  down  to  its  own  ignoble 
level  the  sovereign  thing  he  called  his  pride.  North,  south, 
east  and  west  it  was  springing  its  base  emissaries  on  him. 
Now  they  tripped  him  up,  now  threw  dust  into  his  eyes, 
now  stabbed  him  in  the  back,  now  hit  him  in  the  face. 
The  foul  wretches  were  driving  him  mad.  They  would 
have  to  be  taught  that  he  could  strike  as  well  as  they. 
But  it  would  not  be  done  from  behind  in  his  case. 

He  was  beginning  to  feel  that  he  could  bear  his  indigni- 
ties no  more.  First  was  he  smitten  with  a  bitter  poverty, 
a  fell  disease  that  was  loathed  by  every  right-thinking 

301 


302  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

man.  Then  upon  the  pretext  of  curing  that  distemper  a 
wretched  crew  who  in  the  times  of  his  prosperity  would 
never  have  been  allowed  to  cross  his  threshold,  offered 
him  gibes  and  insults  in  the  guise  of  balsams  for  his  mal- 
ady. Then  his  son,  his  most  cherished  possession,  for 
whom  he  had  made  great  sacrifices,  was  lured  into  the  plot 
against  him.  The  fellow  had  been  entrapped  without 
knowing  that  such  a  thing  as  a  plot  existed.  Then  again, 
his  wife,  who  had  had  all  his  trust,  seemed  to  be  in  dan- 
ger of  falling  a  prey  to  these  diabolical  agencies.  Had 
not  she,  foolish  deluded  woman,  already  insulted  his  intel- 
ligence by  seeking  to  defend  that  for  which  no  defence  was 
possible  ? 

And  now  finally,  as  if  these  things  were  not  enough  to 
undermine  the  sane  spirit  of  a  man  and  cause  its  over- 
throw, these  blackguard  conspirators  had  arranged  to 
strike  a  blow  at  him  through  the  medium  of  one  of  his 
daughters.  A  man  and  a  father  may  hold  up  his  head  in 
the  midst  of  much.  He  may,  for  example,  support  with 
the  expenditure  of  a  few  groans  the  black  ingratitude  of 
an  only  son.  But  a  daughter  is  too  tender,  too  sacred. 
The  disloyalty  of  such  a  one,  as  in  the  case  of  Lear,  goes 
straight  to  his  heart  and  strikes  him  down. 

The  letter  in  his  hand  had  been  placed  there  by  his  wife. 
It  was  addressed  to  his  youngest  daughter,  presumably 
with  the  child's  connivance.  It  bore  the  signature  of  a 
Cuttisham  tradesman.  Such  incidents  were  of  almost 
daily  occurrence  now.  They  were  part  of  the  scheme. 
The  indignities  that  had  recently  been  put  upon  him  were 
incredible;  he  began  to  marvel  at  his  own  patience.  But 
they  were  telling  upon  him.  Every  time  he  was  baited  his 
fibres  stiffened,  he  grew  more  implacable. 

Still,  there  is  the  trite  proverb  that  those  whom  the  gods 
would  destroy  they  first  deprive  of  reason.  Broke  had 
begun  to  feel  that  reason  was  being  plucked  out  of  him  by 
a  ruthless  hand.  They  were  not  content  with  his  son, 
they  must  take  his  daughter.  The  patronage  of  Salmon 
was  not  enough;  he  must  suffer  the  equality  of  Breffit. 
Really  the  whole  business  was  becoming  too  extravagant. 


OUR  HERO  TAKES  HIS  BATTLE-AXE  303 

It  would  have  been  farce,  of  a  somewhat  dubious  quality 
certainly,  if  the  pinch  of  his  circumstances  had  not  ban- 
ished mirth  from  his  lips.  He  felt  that  laughter  was  de- 
manded ;  in  his  former  state  he  must  have  laughed  heartily ; 
but  a  ruined  man  loses  the  knack. 

It  was  while  he  was  surrendered  to  these  reflections, 
that  the  butler  entered  to  say  that  a  Mr.  Porter  desired  to 
see  him. 

"  I  will  see  him,"  said  Broke  briefly. 

The  visitor  entered  the  room  not  without  a  certain  self- 
possession,  a  part  of  his  natural  simplicity  or  part  of  his 
general  insensibility,  whichever  construction  the  beholder 
preferred  to  place  upon  it.  Broke  was  inclined  to  regard 
it  as  part  of  his  effrontery.  He  neither  offered  the  young 
man  the  privilege  of  shaking  his  hand  nor  did  he  invite 
him  to  sit  down. 

Broke  waited  with  a  grim  and  rather  grey  face,  some- 
what the  colour  of  ashes,  for  the  visitor  to  state  his  errand. 
He  waited  with  a  certain  curiosity  as  to  what  mode  of 
procedure  he  would  adopt.  To  aid  him  by  speaking  a 
word  would  be  to  rob  the  thing  of  some  of  its  scientific 
interest.  Therefore  he  stood  looking  at  him  steadily  with 
a  slightly  unnatural  calmness.  A  man  entirely  devoid  of 
emotion  does  not  usually  stand  with  his  fists  clenched, 
while  the  veins  swell  on  his  forehead.  And  all  the  time 
the  audience  sitting  in  heaven,  those  earnest  followers  of 
time-honoured  and  legitimate  farce,  had  their  necks  craned 
upon  this  born  comedian,  not  missing  a  syllable  that  fell 
from  his  mouth  or  a  single  facial  gesture.  Indeed,  they 
doted  on  the  situation  itself,  and  on  the  charming  develop- 
ments it  might  be  expected  to  produce.  Even  the  god  of 
irony  himself,  that  blase  old  dramatist,  might  have  been 
seen  to  throw  himself  back  contentedly  in  the  author's  box, 
with  a  look  of  satisfaction  upon  his  face.  If  his  leading 
man,  who  was  working  so  famously,  proved  equal  to  the 
scene  which  had  been  specially  designed  for  him,  the  thing 
was  bound  to  be  the  talk  of  Olympus.  There  are  worse 
things  than  being  an  author  when  the  stalls  are  hushed 
to  silence  by  a  little  thing  of  your  own,  which  is  being 


304  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

played  so  beautifully  by  your  friend  the  manager  and  his 
gifted  company. 

"  I  don't  suppose,  Mr.  Broke,"  his  visitor  began,  "  you 
know  why  I  am  here.  Perhaps  you  will  kindly  allow 
me " 

Broke  :cut  him  short.  Now  that  the  fellow  was  speak- 
ing the  sound  of  his  voice  was  not  to  be  borne. 

"  Are  you  the  writer  of  that  letter  ?  " 

The  letter  he  held  in  his  hand  he  gave  to  his  visitor. 

"  Yes,  I  wrote  it ;  although  I  would  like  to  say  it  was 
not  intended  for  any  eyes  save  those  to  whom  it  was  ad- 
dressed." 

"  No  need  to  tell  me  that.  Perhaps — ah — ^you  will  have 
the  goodness  to — ah — explain  what  you  mean  by  it." 

"  I  am  here  for  that  purpose.     The  facts  are  these " 

"Stop!"  said  Broke.  ''I  will  not  trouble  you.  If 
you — ah — want  to  explain  your  effrontery  I  may  say  at 
once  that — ah — nothing  you  may  say  will — ah — explain 
it  in  the  least." 

"  Effrontery ! "  The  young  man  grew  rather  pale. 
"  I  must  ask  you  to  forgive  me,  Mr.  Broke,  if  I  do  not 
view  my  conduct  in  that  light.  I  have  the  sanction  of  your 
daughter " 

"  The  case  calls  for  no  statement.  An  apology  may  not 
be  out  of  place,  although  it  is  my — ah — duty  to  warn  you 
beforehand  that  it  is  not  likely  to  be  accepted." 

Porter  looked  bewildered.  Delia's  father  seemed  a  very 
impossible  kind  of  man. 

"  An  ample  and  unreserved  apology  can  be — ah — the 
only  pretext  for  bringing  you  here  to-day.  I — ah — decline 
to  hear  any  defence  of  your  conduct." 

"  I  should  be  sorry,  sir,  to  think  that  my  conduct  has 
been  of  a  kind  to  call  for  a  defence." 

"  I — ^ah — decline  to  discuss  it  in  any  fonu.  It  is  in- 
defensible." 

Broke  spoke  with  admirable  point  and  cogency.  But 
the  powerful  effort  he  was  making  to  keep  a  hold  upon 
himself  was  only  partially  successful.  His  face  grew 
tawnier  and  his  voice  shook. 


OUR  HERO  TAKES  HIS  BATTLE-AXE     305 

The  younger  man  also  was  losing  a  little  of  his  serenity. 
By  an  earnest  self-mastery  he  had  acquired  the  habit  of 
tolerance.  But  his  nature  was  otherwise.  Men  of  his 
type  are  apt  to  be  morbidly  sensitive.  He  was  beginning 
to  feel  already  that  Mr.  Broke  must  not  trespass  too  far. 
There  were  limits.  Beyond  them  a  sense  of  dignity  en- 
tered into  the  question.  Delia's  father  was  becoming  in- 
tolerably arrogant  and  overbearing  in  his  manner. 

"  I  hope,  sir,"  said  Porter,  forcing  himself  to  be  calm, 
"you  will  let  me  speak.  I  may  say  at  once  this  matter 
involves  your  daughter's  happiness." 

*'  Stop !  "  Broke  commanded  him.  "  You  have  no  right, 
no  authority  to  mention  my  daughter.  It  is — ah — gross 
impertinence.  I — ah — shall  feel  obliged  if  you  will  please 
understand  that  our  interview  is  at  an  end." 

Porter  gave  back  a  step ;  there  was  not  a  trace  of  colour 
in  his  face. 

"  Mr.  Broke,"  he  said,  "  even  allowing  for  the  fact  that 
the  relations  we  have  stood  in  hitherto  have  been  those  of 
employer  and  employed,  it  hardly  seems  to  me  that  this  is 
a  tone  one  man  is  privileged  to  use  to  another." 
"  Do  you  propose  to  teach  me  manners  ?  " 
The  younger  man  did  not  yield  an  inch  to  the  grim 
sneer. 

"  No ;  I  ask  only  for  common  courtesy." 
"  I  advise  you  to  go,"  said  Broke  hoarsely. 
His  visitor  remained  immovable  and  erect  with  a  rather 
fine-drawn  smile  on  his  white  face.     His  lips  were  shut 
tight;  the  honest  eyes  were  wide  and  fearless. 

Broke's  blood  was  up;  and  when  it  was  in  that  condi- 
tion he  was  not  prone  to  overmuch  consideration  for 
others.  Besides,  in  Etiquette  for  the  Elect,  the  invaluable 
little  manual  of  behaviour  by  which  he  ordered  his  life, 
it  was  laid  down  as  a  first  principle  that  the  persons  who 
were  entitled  to  his  consideration  were  surprisingly  few. 
A  Cuttisham  tradesman,  for  example,  was  not  of  the  num- 
ber. 

They  continued  to  face  each  other  unflinchingly.  Broke 
had  indicated  the  necessity  for  Porter's  withdrawal.     In 


3o6  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

silence  he  waited  for  him  to  comply.  But  his  visitor  did 
not  move  a  step. 

"  I  am  here  to  speak,"  he  said,  '*  and  speak,  sir,  I  must. 
It  is  of  the  first  importance.  The  opportunity  cannot  re- 
cur." 

Broke  raised  his  chin  warningly.  Porter  still  betrayed 
no  disposition  to  quit  his  ground.  And  to  the  obstinate 
nothing  is  more  intolerable  than  the  exhibition  of  that 
quality  in  another.  Broke  was  confronted  by  the  sudden 
limit  to  his  patience.  It  yawned  a  very  precipice  under 
his  feet.  The  devil  in  that  medieval  heart  was  beginning 
to  wriggle  ferociously  in  its  struggles  to  get  free. 

"  I  speak  with  the  sanction  of  your  daughter,"  said 
the  young  man. 

"  You  lie,"  said  Broke.  "  How  dare  you — ah — affront 
me  to  my  face?  If  you  do  not  get  out  now — at  once,  I 
shall — ah — ah — ^be  under  the — ah — ah — necessity  of  pitch- 
ing you  out.     You  cad !  " 

Porter  heard  dully.  His  senses  were  numbed  and  faint, 
but  in  his  head  the  blood  was  cool.  Not  a  line  relaxed  in 
his  bearing.  There  had  been  aroused  in  him  the  des- 
perate tenacity,  the  concentrated  determination  that  was 
the  keystone  of  his  nature.  He  did  not  move  an  inch, 
but  livid  as  he  was,  he  met  the  unbridled  eyes  of  Broke 
with  a  contemplative  gaze,  which  slowly  acquired  a  tinge 
of  pity. 

When  the  medieval  despot  encounters  a  frank  challenge 
to  the  unlicensed  will  which  is  his  sovereign  law,  there  is 
only  one  means  left  to  him  by  which  to  vindicate  it.  Our 
hero  took  down  his  battle-axe. 

"  My  God !  "  he  cried,  "  you  defy  me  in  my  own  house, 
you — you  icounter- jumper.  You've  had  a  fair  warning. 
You  won't  take  it  ?     Suppose  you  take  this  !  " 

"  This  "  consisted  of  a  heavy  blow  with  the  clenched 
fist  full  on  the  mouth  of  his  visitor.  He  followed  up  with 
a  tremendous  clinch.  In  an  instant  he  had  got  one  hand 
as  tight  as  a  vice  on  the  lean  throat,  and  while  the  younger 
man,  half  stunned  and  shattered  to  pieces  by  the  blow, 
made  semi-conscious  and  ineffectual  wriggles  like  a  dying 


OUR  HERO  TAKES  HIS  BATTLE-AXE  307 

rat,  Broke  hustled  and  dragged  him  to  the  door  of  the 
room.  Without  much  trouble  he  got  him  over  the 
threshold  into  the  hall,  but,  on  arrival  there,  his  task  be- 
came more  difficult. 

They  could  not  have  been  more  unequally  matched. 
Broke  was  a  full-blooded  son  of  the  soil,  lusty  of  thew, 
iclose  knit,  with  a  great  arching  chest;  in  form  a  splendid 
animal,  and  rejoicing  like  one  in  a  life  of  activity  in  the 
open  air. 

Porter,  on  the  other  hand,  was  of  the  type  that  is  bred 
in  towns.  He  seemed  to  present  an  appearance  of  ar- 
rested development,  of  general  physical  incompetence. 
He  was  small-boned,  short-limbed,  muscleless  and  puny; 
his  whole  frame  was  undersized  and  rather  anaemic.  But 
as  soon  as  he  found  himself  hustled  into  the  hall,  and  he 
was  able  to  gain,  by  the  aid  of  the  little  sense  that  had  not 
been  knocked  out  of  him  already,  a  clearer  idea  of  what 
had  befallen  him,  and  what  was  like  to  befall  him  further, 
his  ineffectual  ratlike  wrigglings,  hitherto  merely  instinc- 
tive, became  endowed  with  purpose.  His  puny  hands  rose 
in  the  air,  and  the  fingers  of  them  clawed  about  at  large 
like  the  tentacles  of  an  octopus,  until  they  found  a  grip 
on  Broke.  His  thin  legs  writhed  and  coiled  themselves 
around  the  solid  oak-like  calves  of  his  adversary.  He  en- 
tered into  a  struggle  to  free  his  neck  from  the  grasp  of 
iron  that  was  choking  out  his  life,  and  in  the  effort  his 
collar  and  the  band  of  his  shirt  came  away  together,  and 
allowed  him  something  of  freedom. 

It  was  a  rather  ludicrous  scene  that  was  enacted  in  the 
front  hall  in  the  view  of  Lord  Bosket,  who  had  that  mo- 
ment entered  it,  and  also  in  that  of  divers  astonished  per- 
sons of  the  establishment.  Not  a  word  passed  between 
the  combatants.  Their  silence  was  ominous.  The  only 
sound  that  came  from  their  strife  was  the  continuous 
scuffling  of  their  feet  as  they  slid  upon  the  highly  polished 
floor,  while  now  and  then  a  grunt  was  wrung  out  of  their 
tense  machinery. 

The  younger  and  weaker  man  had  not  a  chance,  and 
the  highest  evidence  to  be  adduced  of  his  resolution  was 


3o8  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

that  he  was  able  to  prolong  the  uncompromising  course 
of  his  exit.  He  was  prepared  to  yield  his  life  rather  than 
submit  to  be  run  out  at  that  distant  door,  but  the  blood  in 
his  veins  was  as  water,  and  his  flaccid  muscles  seemed  to 
crumble  like  bread.  Superhuman  as  were  his  struggles, 
they  were  of  no  more  avail  against  the  contained  fury  that 
encompassed  him  than  is  the  falling  earth  against  the 
energy  of  Cyclops.  Their  clenched  forms  swayed  this 
way  and  that,  but  their  progress  was  ever  in  one  direc- 
tion. 

The  process  was  sinister  in  its  quietude,  its  complete 
freedom  from  audible  sound.  In  the  anguish  of  contest 
their  eyeballs  might  be  breaking  from  their  sockets,  but 
the  fact  was  not  declared  in  the  deadly  silence  with  which 
they  were  knit  to  one  another.  The  nearer  Broke  got  his 
man  to  the  door,  the  more  powerful  grew  his  victim's 
efforts  to  free  his  fists  from  the  embrace  that  rendered 
them  impotent.  If  his  very  life  snapped  in  the  act  he 
felt  he  must  get  one  blow  home,  that  in  some  kind  it 
might  vindicate  his  manhood.  He  had  the  fury  of  the 
savage  beast.  The  trained  intellect  was  nothing  to  him 
now.  Reason,  veneered  over  with  the  civilized  arts,  for- 
got to  exercise  its  functions.  He  was  at  the  mercy  of  the 
primeval  instinct  which  returns  blow  for  blow.  The  shy 
and  delicate  spirit  moving  upon  its  high  plane  of  thought 
and  action  was  now  akin  to  that  of  a  wounded  tiger. 

The  fury  of  the  wild  beast,  however,  could  not  avail. 
There  was  no  escape  from  the  grip  that  was  crushing  him, 
body  and  soul.  He  was  almost  demented,  and  snapping 
like  a  dog  with  his  bloody  teeth  by  the  time  he  approached 
the  threshold  of  the  hall-door ;  but  no  matter  what^  he 
did  he  could  not  avert  the  crowning  ignominy  that  awaited 
him.  He  would  be  spurned  out  of  doors  with  a  kick  like 
a  bag  of  shavings.  The  blow  in  the  face  that  had  knocked 
down  the  citadel  of  his  intelligence,  that  slow  work  of 
years,  as  easily  as  a  house  of  cards,  must  be  submitted  to. 
He  saw  red,  but  the  deviser  of  his  clay  had  withheld  from 
him  the  strength,  the  common  physical  strength  to  requite 
his  foe  for  the  indignity  that  had  been  put  upon  him.    As 


OUR  HERO  TAKES  HIS  BATTLE-AXE  309 

he  swayed  that  moment  close-knit  to  his  adversary  towards 
the  farther  door,  Hfe  itself  had  been  but  a  little  price  at 
which  to  buy  the  satisfaction  of  feeling  his  knuckles  beat- 
ing out  the  teeth  of  this  murderous  monster  who  had 
beaten  out  his. 

At  the  last  a  snarl  of  rage  was  wrung  out  of  him,  to 
find  he  was  powerless.  It  was  the  snarl  of  a  ferocious 
cur  as,  with  tongue  protruding,  it  rolls  over  to  die.  He 
was  mad  and  drunk  and  blind  by  now.  The  vibrations 
of  his  heart  were  choking  him.  His  rage  was  distilled 
through  his  throat  in  little  sobs,  but  nothing  now  could 
save  him.  The  stronger  man  had  both  hands  upon  his 
neck.  He  shook  him  like  a  rat.  Afterwards  he  cast  him 
from  him.  In  contained  fury  he  spurned  him  out  of 
doors  bleeding  to  the  earth. 

Broke  immediately  turned  his  back  upon  the  figure 
sprawling  on  the  gravel  outside  his  door.  His  empurpled 
face  was  confronted  by  those  of  the  excited  servants  and 
Lord  Bosket;  and  as  with  chest  hugely  heaving  and  jowl 
inflamed  he  took  his  handkerchief  from  his  pocket  and 
slowly  mopped  away  the  signs  of  his  discomposure,  the 
voice  of  his  brother-in-law,  alarmed  and  querulous,  broke 
upon  his  ears. 

"  My  God !  Edmund ;  you've  about  done  for  the  feller." 

Broke,  having  mopped  a  face  and  neck  on  which  the 
veins  were  still  swollen  a  good  deal,  his  habitual  heavy- 
footed  serenity  seemed  to  be  restored  to  him.  At  least  he 
greeted  his  brother-in-law  with  excellent  composure. 

"  Hullo,  Charles.  Porson,  you  had — ah — ^better  help 
the  fellow  about  his  business." 

Lord  Bosket,  however,  was  inclined  to  see  a  more  sinis- 
ter side  to  the  aifair. 

"  He  don't  move,"  he  said.  "  We  had  better  go  and 
give  him  a  leg  up.  I  don't  know  who  he  is  or  what  he's 
done,  but  he  took  his  gruel  well.  He's  only  a  feather- 
weight, but  he  was  game  right  up  to  the  finish.  I  like 
to  see  that ;  give  me  the  chap  or  the  horse  that  don't  know 
when  he's  beat.  It  struck  me,  Edmund,  that  you  were  a 
bit  severe,  considerin'  he  is  not  more  than  eight  stone. 


3IO  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

He  is  not  in  your  class,  you  know,  at  all.  You  are  fifteen, 
if  you  are  a  pound.  What's  he  been  doin'?  Poachin'? 
Poisonin'  foxes  ?  " 

While  Lord  Bosket  was  making  these  remarks  and  put- 
ting forward  these  inquiries,  the  butler,  a  footman,  the 
man  who  had  accompanied  the  dogcart  that  had  brought 
my  lord  thither,  a  gardener  or  two,  and  several  odd  men 
from  the  stables,  formed  a  group  round  the  man  lying 
motionless  with  his  blood  staining  the  gravel.  White- 
cheeked  housemaids  peered  out  of  the  upper  windows. 
Broke,  however,  heedless  as  to  the  fate  of  his  victim,  had 
betaken  himself  back  to  the  library. 

Lord  Bosket  now  came  bustling  through  the  group,  and 
seeing  that  the  form  they  surrounded  was  insensible  and 
that  blood  was  issuing  from  it,  knelt  down  on  the  gravel 
with  an  air  of  professional  assurance  bred  of  experience 
in  many  glove  fights.  He  tried  to  raise  the  unconscious 
man  in  his  arms.  Not  being  able  to  do  so,  he  looked  up 
at  the  on-lookers  in  a  querulously  agitated  manner. 

"  We  want  a  doctor,"  he  said.  "  Somebody  gc  and  get 
a  doctor,  can't  you?    I  don't  like  it  at  all." 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

ENCOUNTER   BETWEEN   A  DOGCART   AND  AN   OMNIBUS 

THEY  picked  up  the  young  man  and  propped  his  head 
against  a  corner  of  the  stone  balustrade  that  ran  at 
right  angles  to  the  front  door.  The  appearance  he  made 
was  so  unfortunate  that  Lord  Bosket  became  more  agi- 
tated than  ever, 

"  Get  a  doctor,  can't  you,  somebody  ?  Of  course  there's 
not  one  about.  They  are  the  same  as  the  police — never 
there  when  you  want  'em." 

There  was  no  need  to  loose  the  young  man's  collar, 
because  in  the  struggle  it  had  been  torn  free.  Water  was 
sent  for ;  but  before  that  primitive  remedy  had  arrived,  to 
the  immense  relief  of  Delia's  uncle  and  also  that  of  the 
bystanders,  consciousness  showed  signs  of  returning. 
Presently  Porter  opened  his  eyes.  In  addition  to  the  dis- 
tressing condition  of  his  mouth,  blood  was  flowing  from  a 
deep  wound  in  the  forehead  upon  which  he  had  pitched  in 
his  exit.  He  certainly  made  a  sorry  figure  with  the  blood 
dripping  rapidly  into  his  eyes,  and  smearing  the  vivid 
pallor  of  his  cheeks. 

As  soon  as  Porter  knew  what  the  something  was  which 
was  so  warm  and  wet  and  so  blinding,  his  feeling  of  repug- 
nance was  so  great  that  he  nearly  became  insensible  again. 
It  was  only  when  he  awoke  to  the  fact  that  he  was  the 
centre  of  a  group,  and  that  anxious  and  startled  faces  were 
directed  upon  him,  that  he  showed  signs  of  regaining  self- 
Control.  In  the  shock  of  this  second  discovery  he  stum- 
bled to  his  feet.  In  the  act,  however,  he  nearly  fell,  and 
would  have  done  so  had  not  Lord  Bosket  supported  him. 

"  It  is  no  use,  my  lad,"  said  Delia's  uncle,  taking  hold 
of  him  firmly.  "  You'll  have  to  have  that  head  and  mouth 
seen  to,  and  thank  God  it's  no  worse.     Get  him  a  chair, 

3" 


312  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

somebody,  can't  you?  And  get  him  a  drop  o'  brandy. 
Sit  down  there,  my  lad,  and  don't  try  standin'  till  we've 
fixed  you  up  a  bit.  As  damned  nasty  a  cut  as  ever  I  saw. 
Sit  down,  and  I'll  tie  this  handkerchief  round  it  tem- 
porarily, and  then  I'll  drive  you  into  Cuttisham,  and  let 
a  vet.  put  a  few  stitches  in  it  for  you.  Of  course  there 
isn't  one  in  this  God-forsaken  hole ! " 

The  sufferer,  however,  showed  no  inclination  to  accept 
services  of  anyone.  He  made  several  weak  efforts  to 
escape  from  the  group,  and  several  times  assured  it  feebly 
that  "  he  was  all  right." 

"  Yes,  my  lad,  you  look  all  right,  you  do.  But  this  will 
put  the  fear  of  God  into  you,  what  ?  " 

The  awe-inspiring  agent  in  question  proved  to  be  brandy, 
which  had  now  arrived,  and  Lord  Bosket  measured  it  out 
with  paternal  care,  and,  with  a  firmness  that  was  quite 
unusual  to  his  character,  insisted  on  the  young  man  drink- 
ing it.  My  lord  then  drank  the  remainder  himself,  with 
a  relish  far  greater  than  the  patient  had  exhibited,  an- 
nouncing to  the  onlookers  as  he  did  so  that  "  these  things 
were  devilish  upsettin'." 

Nature  was  having  her  turn  with  Porter  now.  Fortu- 
nately, the  tone  of  Delia's  uncle  was  so  solicitous,  and  his 
concern  so  evident,  that  in  the  end  the  shaken  and  demoral- 
ized young  rhan  surrendered  to  him  entirely.  In  any  case 
it  was  not  in  his  power  to  make  an  effectual  protest. 

Delia's  uncle  having  bandaged  personally  the  deep  cut 
near  the  temple  with  several  large  handkerchiefs  and  the 
moderate  skill  at  his  command,  called  to  his  man  to  bring 
the  dogcart  along.  While  this  order  was  being  obeyed 
Lord  Bosket  took  out  his  pocket-book  and  selected  there- 
from two  crisp  pieces  of  paper. 

"  Here's  a  tenner,  my  lad.  That'll  help  to  put  your  head 
all  right,  eh?" 

As  the  young  man  was  in  no  condition  to  accept  this 
specific  for  a  broken  mouth  and  a  lacerated  forehead, 
Delia's  uncle  crushed  them  into  one  of  the  pockets  of  his 
coat.  The  cart  having  now  been  drawn  up  in  a  convenient 
manner,  he  said: 


A  DOGCART  AND  AN  OMNIBUS  313 

"  Hold  him  up  while  I  get  in.  Then  give  him  a  hand, 
and  mind  how  you  do  it.  The  poor  devil's  not  quite  him- 
self. Anybody  know  who  he  is  ?  I  shall  look  well  drivin' 
a  poachin'  feller  into  Cuttisham,  but  I  expect  that's  about 
the  truth.  Never  mind,  Edmund  should  not  be  so  rough. 
Besides,  I  don't  care  who  or  what  the  feller  is,  he's 
game." 

At  this  point  the  butler  came  forward  with  a  great  air  of 
mystery. 

"  It  is  the  young  man,  my  lord,"  he  said  in  a  diplomatic 
undertone,  "  who  used  to  come  to  teach  Miss  Delia." 

"  Didn't  know  there  was  a  young  man  who  used  to  come 
to  teach  Miss  Delia." 

"  Oh,  yes,  my  lord.  Her  ladyship  used  to  send  a  young 
college  gentleman  to  teach  her  Greek  and  Latin." 

"  Nonsense,  Porson.     This  can't  be  the  feller." 

"  I  beg  your  lordship's  pardon,  but  it  is  impossible  for 
me  to  be  mistaken." 

"  Nonsense,  my  boy.  Mr.  Broke  would  not  be  such  a 
damned  fool." 

The  old  fellow  pressed  closer  to  his  lordship's  ear  to 
impart  an  even  more  pregnant  item  of  information. 

"  What— what— what !  " 

Delia's  uncle  embodied  his  immense  astonishment  by 
throwing  his  legs  apart,  burying  his  hands  in  his  pockets, 
looking  comically  down  his  nose  and  pursing  his  lips.  For 
the  best  part  of  a  minute  he  occupied  this  attitude,  before 
he  recorded  his  bewilderment  in  his  favourite  formula. 

"  Well,  I'm  damned." 

The  immediate  business  in  hand  having  then  recurred 
to  him,  he  climbed  into  the  dogcart  and  superintended  the 
entrance  into  that  high  and  awkward  vehicle  of  the  still 
only  half-sensible  young  man.  As  he  took  the  reins  he 
called  out  to  his  man: 

"  I  shan't  be  back  here  to-day,  Thompson.  Borrow  a 
mount  and  ride  home." 

The  dogcart  started  briskly  on  its  way.  Hardly  had  it 
left  the  lodge  gates  of  Covenden  when  an  old  and  familiar 
vehicle  hove  in  sight.     It  was  the  ramshackle  omnibus 


314  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

returning  from  the  garden-party.  A  sly  but  inveterately 
humorous  leer  appeared  in  the  face  of  my  lord  when  this 
rather  absurd  equipage  waddled  into  the  middle  distance. 
He  touched  up  his  horse  and  determined  to  waste  no  time 
in  getting  past  it.  But  the  interior  of  the  quaint  chariot 
was  furnished  with  seven  pairs  of  feminine  eyes. 

''  Why,  it  is  Uncle  Charles !  "  exclaimed  the  occupants 
excitedly  one  to  another.  "  And,  oh,  there  has  been  an 
accident !  There  is  a  man  with  him  who  is  bleeding  and 
smothered  in  bandages." 

Delia  was  next  but  one  to  the  door.  In  a  moment  she 
was  up  and  clutching  at  the  handle.  But  quick  as  she 
was  her  mother  was  quicker.  She  rose  in  almost  the  same 
instant  and  caught  her  by  the  wrist. 

"  Sit  down,  child,"  she  said  quietly. 

Delia  swayed  a  moment  irresolute  with  the  lumbering 
motions  of  the  vehicle.  She  looked  at  her  mother  with 
something  rather  remarkable  in  her  face. 

''  Sit  down,  child." 

The  tone  was  even  quieter  than  before. 

Delia  obeyed. 

By  this  time  the  dogcart  had  passed  on  out  of  sight. 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 

TRIBULATIONS   OF  A   MIDDLE-AGED  PEER  AT  THE   HANDS  OF 

WOMAN 

BY  the  time  Delia  reached  home  things  had  resumed 
their  normal  course.  Visible  evidence  there  was  none 
to  testify  to  the  occurrence  of  the  extraordinary.  In  the 
demoralized  state  of  her  mind  she  was  almost  impelled  at 
first  to  make  inquiries  of  the  servants,  but  reflection 
showed  her  the  impossibility  of  such  a  course.  Indeed, 
she  hoped  that  this  might  be  a  matter  of  which  they  knew 
nothing ;  but  whether  they  knew,  or  not,  and  whatever  the 
agonizing  suspense  that  was  devouring  her,  she  could  not 
take  them  into  her  confidence  on  such  a  subject. 

By  evening  she  was  persuaded — such  was  the  ominous 
silence  that  was  maintained  by  all — that  she  must  await 
the  next  visit  of  her  Uncle  Charles.  Scarcely  a  day  went 
by  without  his  putting  in  an  appearance  at  Covenden,  if 
he  happened  to  be  at  home.  Whatever  it  cost  her  to  with- 
stand those  pangs  that  were  tearing  her  heart  into  pieces, 
he  was  the  only  person  she  could  consult.  She  might  take 
the  extreme  course  of  putting  a  question  to  her  father, 
but  he  would  hardly  be  likely  to  answer  it ;  and  if  he  did 
answer  ft  in  the  terms  she  foresaw  he  must,  would  not  a 
terrible  ordeal  be  presented  to  them  both?  Her  curiosity 
had  mounted  to  a  passion,  it  was  gnawing  her  to  death,  but 
with  a  young  girl  delicacy  is  sometimes  stronger  than  death 
itself. 

The  bleeding  man  covered  with  bandages  she  had  seen 
in  the  dogcart  had  confirmed  her  darkest  fears.  In  her 
heart  she  felt  it  was  not  necessary  to  inquire  what  had 
taken  place  in  the  interval  between  her  lover's  coming  to 
that  house  and  his  going  from  it.  But  the  case  was  too 
grave  for  circumstantial  evidence.     She  was  as  sure  as 

315 


3i6  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

that  there  was  a  God  in  heaven  that  her  father  was  guilty ; 
but  in  her  was  a  sheer  physical  repugnance  to  convict  him 
until  irrefragable  proof  of  his  crime  was  laid  before  her 
eyes.  Natural  reverence  for  her  father,  which  when  all 
was  said,  was  still  paramount  in  her,  demanded  that  he 
should  be  given  the  benefit  of  every  doubt.  That  is  not 
the  way  of  her  sex  as  a  rule.  Instinct  prompting  it  will 
take  the  shortest  of  cuts  to  the  most  inaccessible  conclu- 
sions. But  in  the  case  of  her  father,  so  long  as  no  eye- 
witness could  be  brought  forward  who  was  prepared  to 
affirm  what  had  taken  place,  she  must  not  dare  to  judge 
him.  And  perhaps  this  unfeminine  forbearance  on  the 
part  of  his  youngest  daughter  was  as  true  a  compliment  as 
the  character  of  Broke  ever  received. 

Nearly  a  week  went  by  before  Lord  Bosket  came  to 
Covenden  again. 

During  that  period  his  unhappy  young  niece  hardly  laid 
her  head  on  her  pillow.  As  the  days  passed  she  felt  that 
if  soon  she  did  not  learn  the  truth  she  must  die  or  lose 
her  reason.  She  had  no  means  of  getting  information. 
It  was  not  possible  to  write  to  her  lover.  In  those  black 
days  she  hardly  dared  to  think  of  him.  Her  first  wish 
was  to  shut  that  bleeding  image  of  him  out  of  her  mind. 
It  was  a  hideous  nightmare  to  which  her  imagination  must 
not  revert. 

In  the  meantime  the  inquiries  she  could  not  bring  her- 
self to  make  had  probably  been  made  by  others.  For  at 
least,  dating  from  that  tragic  afternoon,  life  among  her 
sisters  would  have  been  intolerable  had  she  not  been  pos- 
sessed by  one  all-dominating  thought.  She  suffered  a  com- 
pleter ostracism  than  ever.  They  neither  spoke  to  her 
nor  looked  at  her;  they  shut  the  door  of  their  common 
room  against  her;  they  avoided  her  sedulously  at  meals. 
She  was  wholly  debarred  their  pastimes  and  companion- 
ship ;  and  so  thorough-going  could  they  be  when  they  chose, 
that  like  the  name  of  their  brother  that  of  their  youngest 
sister  was  banished  from  their  lips.  Their  behaviour  was 
formulated  on  the  principle  that  she  had  no  existence  at 
all. 


TRIBULATIONS  OF  A  MIDDLE-AGED  PEER    317 

Her  mother,  however,  was  as  usual.  Her  smile  had  as 
little  meaning  as  ever,  and  her  epigrammatic  silences  as 
much.  In  her  daily  demeanour,  that  miracle  of  candour 
and  suavity,  there  was  nothing  to  suggest  that  there  had 
been  an  "incident";  it  was  just  as  if  their  relations  were 
exactly  as  they  had  always  been.  She  might  have  been 
quite  unversed  in  the  art  of  suppressing  letters ;  and  intel- 
lectually incapable  of  reading  the  expression  on  the  face 
of  her  daughter  when  she  held  her  by  the  wrist  to  prevent 
her  jumping  from  the  omnibus. 

The  manner  of  her  father  was  not  much  more  eloquent. 
Maybe  he  was  grimmer  than  of  yore  and  sufficed  more  to 
himself.  His  great  laugh  was  hardly  ever  heard  now  from 
the  head  of  the  table;  something  seemed  to  be  lacking  in 
the  old  spirit  of  cameraderie  between  him  and  his  girls. 
To  Delia  at  least  he  seemed  no  longer  all  tenderness  and 
all  simplicity.  To  her  remorseless  eyes  it  was  as  though 
he  sat  with  a  wolf  gnawing  at  his  vitals.  The  greyness 
of  his  hair  had  become  much  more  noticeable  of  late;  his 
cheeks  were  not  so  ruddy,  they  seemed  to  hang  loose  and 
flabby ;  he  was  ageing  visibly.  Nor  did  he  carry  his  head 
quite  as  of  yore.  It  had  lost  a  little  of  its  military  trim- 
ness.  Everything  about  him  was  become  creased  and  re- 
laxed, where  formerly  it  was  so  alert,  so  finely  braced, 
so  full  of  self-esteem.  Delia  would  have  been  shocked  by 
the  change  in  her  father,  which  a  few  weeks  had  wrought, 
had  it  now  been  possible  for  her  to  be  shocked  by  any- 
thing. 

At  last  the  morning  came  when  she  could  entertain  the 
hope  of  setting  all  doubts  at  rest.  Her  Uncle  Charles 
waddled  in  among  them  just  as  they  were  finishing  break- 
fast. His  comings  and  goings  were  as  casual  as  anything 
could  be.  He  was  there  at  all  times  and  seasons,  the  first 
thing  in  the  morning,  the  last  thing  at  night,  so  that  in  the 
process  of  time  a  bedroom  had  become  dedicated  to  his 
use,  where  the  sheets  were  kept  always  aired  for  him.  He 
had  a  latch-key  of  the  hall  door  of  Covenden  against  those 
occasions  when  he  had  no  desire  "  to  go  home  and  face 
the  music";  and  it  was  nothing  unusual  for  his  feet  to 


3i8  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

be  heard  stumbling  up  the  stairs  of  his  brother-in-law's 
residence  in  the  small  hours  of  the  morning. 

"  Top  o'  the  mornin',"  he  said,  as  he  took  a  seat  at  the 
table  in  the  midst  of  the  family,  and  summoned  the  as- 
siduous Porson  by  the  simple  expedient  of  holding  up  a 
finger. 

**  You  can  get  me  a  mornin'  prayer,  Porson." 

As  Porson  retired  on  this  errand  he  was  recalled  per- 
emptorily. 

''  Did  I  say  a  devilled  kidney  as  well?  " 

"  Your  lordship  did  not." 

"  Well,  I  meant  to.  A  mornin'  prayer  and  a  devilled 
kidney." 

Porson  had  proceeded  but  a  little  farther  on  his  pious 
mission  when  he  was  recalled  even  more  peremptorily. 

"  I'll  have  the  prayer,  Porson,  but  never  mind  the  kid- 
ney. I've  got  a  tongue  this  mornin'  like  the  bottom  of  a 
parrot's  cage." 

Porson  bowed. 

On  this  occasion  he  got  as  far  as  the  sideboard,  where- 
upon he  was  adjured  to  "  Look  lively,  there's  a  good  fel- 
ler." 

A  "  mornin'  prayer  "  proved  to  be  a  polite  euphemism 
for  a  large  tumbler,  a  decanter  of  whisky,  and  a  bottle  of 
mineral  water.  Lord  Bosket  proceeded  to  mix  these  in- 
gredients in  the  nice  proportions  amenable  to  a  palate  that 
was  "  like  the  bottom  of  a  parrot's  cage." 

It  was  to  be  gathered  from  the  querulous  air  of  my  lord 
that  his  domestic  life  had  suffered  yet  another  check  to 
its  harmony. 

"  The  missis  is  back  from  town  on  the  rampage.  And 
all  about  nothin',  mark  you.  There'd  be  an  excuse  for  her 
if  I  was  a  wrong  'un,  which  I'm  not;  she  can't  say  that  I 
haven't  always  been  a  good  husband  to  her.  And  what 
do  you  suppose  it's  all  about  this  time?  Why,  simply 
because  durin'  her  absence  from  home  I  arranged  a  little 
glove  fight  in  the  park,  a  snug  little  mill  and  nothin'  more. 
Quite  an  informal  little  affair,  don't  you  know,  between 


TRIBULATIONS  OF  A  MIDDLE-AGED  PEER    319 

two  middleweights  of  the  district  for  a  small  purse  sub- 
scribed by  myself  and  a  few  friends.  We  were  goin'  to 
have  no  press,  no  publicity.  It  was  goin'  to  be  quite  pri- 
vate, tickets  by  invitation,  everything  very  select  and  all 
as  right  as  rain.  But  God  bless  my  soul,  you  should  ha' 
seen  the  old  pet  when  she  got  to  hear  of  it.  It  was  a 
degradation  of  the  highest  and  purest  instincts  of  the  lord 
knows  what !  One-sided,  I  call  it.  I  stand  her  poets  and 
socialists  without  a  word,  absolutely  without  a  word,  mark 
you.  We've  had  anarchists  and  labour  leaders  and  Feni- 
ans in  the  house  before  now,  but  I  can't  even  go  rattin* 
in  a  ditch  with  a  terrier  pup  on  a  Sunday  mornin'  but 
what  she  calls  down  fire  from  heaven.  And  thaf  s  not  all ; 
she's  got  another  grievance  now.  Somebody  has  told  her 
a  cock-and-bull  story  about  Billy  havin'  turned  up  his 
commission  in  the  Blues,  and  she  swears  I've  kept  it  from 
her.  It  was  no  use  my  sayin'  it  was  all  my  eye  and  Betty 
Martin ;  she  says  it  is  a  conspiracy  to  keep  her  in  the  dark. 
You  had  better  let  her  know,  Jane,  that  she's  found 
a  mare's  nest;  but  her  common  sense  ought  to  tell  her." 

"  On  the  contrary,  Charles,  I  am  afraid  Emma  is  very 
well  informed,"  said  his  sister.  "  He  could  not  afford  the 
Blues  any  longer.     Too  expensive,  you  know." 

"What,  my  gal?" 

His  jaw  dropped  at  the  news. 

"  That's  a  nice  thing !  Rough  on  a  feller,  that  is,  espe- 
cially a  young  feller.  He  oughtn't  to  ha'  done  that.  Why 
didn't  you  speak  to  me  about  it  ?  I  daresay  I  could  have 
arranged  to  do  something  in  an  important  matter  like 
that." 

"  You  are  very  good,  Charles,  but  we  really  felt  we 
could  not  hold  ourselves  indebted  to  you  to  any  further 
extent.     You  have  been  too  generous  already." 

"  If  I  can't  give  my  own  nephew  a  leg  up,  it's  a  pity. 
For  him  to  do  a  thing  like  that  touches  me  a  lot  more 
than  a  few  pounds  a  year  towards  his  keep  would  ha' 
done." 

"  That  is  only  part  of  the  reason." 


320  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

'*  Well,  it  is  a  very  serious  thing  for  a  young  feller  at 
his  time  of  life,  let  me  tell  you.  And  what's  he  goin'  into 
now — the  police  force  ?  " 

"  He  has  left  England." 

"Wha-a-a-t!" 

"  He  sailed  for  South  Africa  last  Wednesday  week." 

Lord  Bosket  sat  bolt  upright  in  his  chair,  with  his  glass 
suspended  midway  to  his  lips. 

"  That's  the  limit !  "  was  all  he  could  say. 

The  silence  around  the  breakfast-table  was  rather  pain- 
ful. 

''  You  had  no  right  to  let  him  go.  That  lad's  as  much 
to  me  as  he  is  to  you,  by  God  he  is !  " 

The  face  of  Billy's  uncle  was  pathetic  in  its  consterna- 
tion.    The  silence  of  all  around  him  continued. 

"  I'm  fairly  knocked  over,"  he  said.  "  And  this  Maud 
Wayling  scheme — all  off,  I  suppose  ?  " 

"  Yes,  Charles,  it  is,"  said  Mrs.  Broke  impassively. 

For  a  time  her  brother  rocked  himself  to  and  fro  in  his 
chair,  pursing  his  lips  and  shaking  his  head  from  side  to 
side  at  intervals. 

"  It's  the  rottenest  thing  I  ever  heard  in  my  life.  You 
have  both  done  a  very  wrong  thing." 

Lord  Bosket's  distress  was  unbridled.  That  of  his  hear- 
ers must  have  been  quite  as  acute;  but  tact  was  not  the 
strong  point  of  that  forthright  soul.  Broke  might  sit  grim 
and  grey  in  an  inaccessible  silence;  his  wife  might  fence 
and  parry  and  make  obvious  attempts  to  turn  the  conver- 
sation; the  girls  might  all  be  staring  straight  in  front  of 
them  with  faces  that  grew  white  and  scarlet  by  turns; 
but  signals  such  as  these  were  not  for  Lord  Bosket.  As 
was  usual  with  him,  when  he  was  in  pain  he  wanted  it  to 
be  shared  by  others,  in  the  same  generous  way  that  he  was 
prepared  to  take  the  sufferings  of  others  on  himself. 

At  the  first  convenient  moment  Mrs.  Broke  rose  from 
the  table  and  left  the  room.  The  girls,  in  great  distress 
as  they  were,  promptly  took  advantage  of  their  mother's 
action  to  make  good  their  own  escape.  Broke  also  fol- 
lowed out  gloomily  upon  their  heels,  so  that  in  less  than 


TRIBULATIONS  OF  A  MIDDLE-AGED  PEER    321 

a  minute  the  aggrieved  Lord  Bosket  was  left  to  conduct 
his  soliloquy  to  the  glass  of  whisky  in  front  of  him. 

"  It's  the  limit ! "  he  continued  to  repeat  at  automatic 
intervals,  with  his  legs  sprawling  under  the  table,  his  chin 
on  his  breast,  and  his  hands  thrust  into  the  pockets  of  his 
breeches. 

To  him  in  the  midst  of  his  soliloquy  came  the  youngest 
of  his  nieces  with  a  rather  white  face.  The  butler  and  a 
satellite  were  clearing  away  the  breakfast  things. 

"  Porson,  will  you  leave  the  room  for  a  few  minutes, 
please,"  said  Delia  in  a  tone  of  the  oddest  precision  which 
was  quite  unlike  the  one  she  used  as  a  rule.  "  I  will  ring 
the  bell  when*  I  have  spoken  with  his  lordship.  We  are 
not  to  be  interrupted,  please." 

She  waited  for  them*  to  go,  and  noticing  a  key  in  the 
door  of  the  room,  she  took  the  precaution  of  turning  it. 

Her  Uncle  Charles  had  sat  with  his  back  to  her  while 
these  manoeuvres  were  going  forward.  She  now  came  and 
took  a  seat  opposite  to  him,  leaned  her  elbows  on  the  table, 
and  looked  at  him  in  a  concentrated  manner  with  her  chin 
resting  on  her  hands. 

"  Hullo,  young  'un,"  said  her  Uncle  Charles,  with  a  start. 
"  I  didn't  notice  you  there.  I  thought  you  had  all  gone. 
What  do  you  think  of  this  business  ?  Don't  you  think  it  is 
very  wrong  and  monstrous  ?  I  suppose  I  ought  not  to  say 
so  to  you  young  fillies ;  but  I  can't  help  speakin'  as  I  feel. 
Wrong  and  monstrous,  I  call  it." 

Delia  made  no  reply. 

"  They  won't  tell  me  all,  young  ^un ;  but  I  mean  to  know. 
I  have  a  right  to  know.  I  am  the  young  feller's  uncle, 
do  you  see ;  he's  the  only  nephew  I've  got ;  and  I  was  very 
proud  of  that  feller.  He  was  the  apple  of  my  eye.  Good- 
looking,  straight for'ard,  cheery,  manly  young  feller.  I 
expect  it's  that  Maud  Wayling.  I  predicted  trouble  at 
the  start.  I've  said  to  your  mother  all  along  it  would  be 
a  mistake  if  she  tried  to  force  his  hand." 

There  was  a  keen  pity  in  the  face  of  Delia,  which  was 
generally  there  when  her  Uncle  Charles  "  was  in  one  of 
his  moods."     She  waited  for  him  to  cease  speaking;  and 


322  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

when  he  had  done  so,  she  said  in  a  perfectly  quiet  and  con- 
tained voice: 

"  Uncle  Charles,  did  you  see  that  accident  the  other 
day?" 

"  Accident  ?     What  accident  ?  " 

"  The  accident  to  the  man  who  was  covered  in  blood. 
Don't  you  remember  he  was  in  your  dogcart  when  you 
drove  past  us  in  the  lane  the  other  day  ?  " 

"Oh,  that!" 

The  face  of  Uncle  Charles  grew  full  of  strange  mean- 
ing. 

A  chill  spread  slowly  over  Delia's  veins. 

"  It  was  not  an  accident.  Uncle  Charles  ?  " 

"  I  did  not  say  so,  young  'un." 

"  Please  tell  me.  Uncle  Charles,  how  it  happened." 

Lord  Bosket  grew  wary.  He  was  not  the  type  of  man 
who  is  likely  to  be  overborne  by  a  superfluity  of  wisdom, 
but  the  look  upon  his  niece's  face  would  have  been  a  warn- 
ing to  the  most  obtuse  uncle  in  the  world.  Besides,  in  a 
dim  fashion  he  recalled  to  his  mind  that  old  Porson,  or 
somebody,  had  made  a  rather  odd  comment  on  the  affair 
at  the  time  of  its  occurrence.  He  was  not  exactly  a  Solo- 
mon, but  somehow  he  felt  it  behoved  him  to  walk  deli- 
cately. 

"  Oh,  yes,  young  'un,"  he  said,  affecting  a  lightness  of 
tone  that  would  hardly  have  deceived  an  infant  in  arms, 
"  it  may  have  been  an  accident." 

"  It  was  not  an  accident.  Uncle  Charles." 

Delia  made  this  announcement  in  a  tone  that  had  a 
rather  uncomfortable  amount  of  decision  in  it.  Somehow 
her  face  was  not  altogether  nice  to  look  at. 

"  Wasn't  it  ?  "  said  her  uncle,  with  admirable  caution. 

"  Did  you  see  it.  Uncle  Charles  ?  " 

"  A  bit  of  it.     I  may  have  seen  a  bit  of  it." 

"  Please  tell  me  what  you  saw." 

"  I — I  don't  think  I  ought,  young  'un.  Little  gals  should 
not  be  so  inquisitive,  what  ?  " 

"  It  was  not  an  accident  at  all,  Uncle  Charles." 

"Wasn't  it?" 


TRIBULATIONS  OF  A  MIDDLE-AGED  PEER    323 

*'  You  are  trying  to  deceive  me.  Uncle  Charles." 
"  Why   should   I   try  to   deceive   you,  you   silly  little 
fool?" 

"  Because  it  was  not  an  accident." 

"  Well,  I  never  said  it  v^as,  did  I  ?  But  whatever  it  was. 
Miss  Muffet,  be  guided  by  me  and  think  no  more  about 
it." 

"  You  must  please  tell  me  what  happened,  Uncle 
Charles." 

"  You  must  please  forget  all  about  it,  Miss  Poppet.  I 
daresay  it  gave  you  all  a  bit  of  a  shock  to  come  on  a  bleed- 
ing man  suddenly  like  that;  but  what's  the  odds,  it  is  no 

business  of  anybody's.     Your  father " 

"My  father?"  said  Delia. 

Lord  Bosket  saw  his  mistake  almost  before  he  had  made 
it.  But  his  niece  had  pounced  upon  it  like  a  hawk  al- 
ready. 

"My  father?" 

"  Never  mind  your  father;  we  will  drop  the  subject,  eh? 
Little  gals  should  not  worry  their  silly  heads  about  things 
they  can't  understand,  eh?  Now  be  a  good  and  sensible 
little  gal,  and  the  very  next  time  I  come  I  will  bring  you 
a  four-pound  box  of  chocolates  from  Gunter's,  the  big- 
gest they  keep  and  the  best  quality." 
"What  did  my  father  do?" 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Lord  Bosket,  with  a  lame  and 
somewhat  hurried  recourse  to  his  tumbler. 

"  You  do  know.  Uncle  Charles,  and  I  insist  that  you  tell 
me. 

On  Delia's  side  there  was  close-breathing  quietude  that 
was  extraordinary.  The  demand,  made  without  emotion 
of  any  kind,  admitted  of  no  compromise. 

"  Damn  it  all !  "  said  Lord  Bosket,  beginning  to  wriggle 
in  his  chair.     He  was  growing  very  uncomfortable.     "  You 
ought  not  ask  me,  you  know,  and  I  ought  not  to  tell  you." 
"  I  insist.  Uncle  Charles." 

The  unyielding  face,  still  propped  on  the  stiff  hands, 
was  so  calm  that  it  began  to  have  a  kind  of  baleful  attrac- 
tion for  the  uneasy  person,  whose  glass  shook  in  his  hand. 


324  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

It  was  the  rummest  face  he  had  ever  seen  on  anybody, 
man  or  woman. 

"  You  mustn't  ask  me,  you  know.  It  is  not  good  for 
little  gals  to  know  everything." 

"  My  father  insulted  him  and  afterwards  struck  him." 

"  I  did  not  say  so,  young  'un,  and  you  can't  say  I 
did." 

"  You  shall  not  deny  it.  Uncle  Charles." 

"  Who  said  I  wanted  to  deny  it,  you  silly  little  fool  ? 
Why  should  I?  What's  the  odds  one  way  or  the  other? 
Even  if  your  father  did  cut  up  rough,  he  wouldn't  with- 
out the  best  of  reasons,  would  he?  Come  now,  let  it  go 
at  that,  and  don't  trouble  your  silly  little  head  about  it 
any  more ;  and  be  a  good  little  gal." 

"You  admit  it,  Uncle  Charles?" 

Lord  Bosket  looked  at  his  niece  with  whimsical  but 
rather  bleared  eyes.  It  had  come  to  something  when  a 
niece  not  much  bigger  than  a  pussy  cat  was  able  to  brow- 
beat a  man  of  his  age.  But  yet  he  felt  he  had  not  a  thou- 
sand-to-one chance  against  her.  This  was  the  solidest 
chip  of  determination  he  had  ever  seen.  She  had  got  a 
will  to  her  that  was  worth  that  of  ten  men  such  as  himself. 
He  had  never  seen  any  woman  with  a  face  like  that;  he 
was  damned  if  he  would  not  rather  have  had  to  face  the 
missis  at  her  worst ! 

"You  admit  it.  Uncle  Charles?" 

"  Well,  and  suppose  I  do,  what's  the  odds,  you  funny 
little  fool?  You  can  take  it  from  me  that  your  father 
had  good  reasons  for  anything  he  did." 

"  He  attacked  a  defenceless  man ;  a  man  weaker  than 
himself  and  smaller." 

The  tone  continued  to  be  perfectly  calm  and  unemo- 
tional. 

"  Rubbish.  Don't  think  about  it  in  that  way,  you  little 
silly.  It  is  not  a  thing  to  make  a  song  about.  It  is  noth- 
ing at  all,  take  it  from  me.  I  daresay  the  feller  was  in- 
solent." 

"  You  do  not  know  that.  Uncle  Charles ;  and  one  ought 
not  to  say  what  one  does  not  know  to  be  the  truth." 


TRIBULATIONS  OF  A  MIDDLE-AGED  PEER    325 

"  No,  I  suppose  one  ought  not.'' 

He  was  completely  taken  aback  for  a  moment  by  the 
manner  of  his  young  niece.  All  at  once  it  made  him 
laugh. 

"  But  we  are  gettin'  to  be  a  rum  little  devil,  aren't  we  ? 
This  is  not  the  little  Miss  Muffet  I  used  to  know,  quiet  as 
a  mouse,  and  as  simple  as  a  baby.  If  you  go  on  like  this, 
miss,  you  will  be  a  terror,  you  will.  You  haven't  been 
taking  lessons  from  your  Aunt  Emma  for  nothin',  you've 
not;  when  you  run  your  match  with  her  you  won't  run 
second,  you  won't !  You  are  a  little  devil.  Still,  we  won't 
worry  our  heads  any  more  about  it,  will  we?  As  I  say, 
what's  the  odds?  Your  father  should  be  a  judge  of  his 
own  affairs.  Little  gals  must  not  bother  their  heads  about 
''em.  Now,  Miss  Poppet,  not  another  word ;  and  you  shall 
have  those  chocolates  the  very  next  time  I  come." 

In  this  delicately  wise  and  paternal  fashion  the  subject 
was  dismissed.  Delia  unlocked  the  door  and  went  out  of 
the  room.  Lord  Bosket  continued  to  confront  his  glass 
for  some  little  time  afterwards.  Somehow  his  thoughts 
would  continue  to  revert  to  the  singular  interview  he  had 
just  had  with  the  youngest  of  all  his  nieces;  and  for  the 
time  being  they  overlaid  those  in  regard  to  his  nephew  so 
recently  in  his  mind.  To  find  such  an  air  of  mystery  about 
one  of  his  "  little  chestnut  fillies  "  was  something  quite 
new;  they  were  such  simple  people,  as  frank  and  open 
as  the  day.  The  young  'un  defeated  him  altogether.  He 
could  not  remember  to  have  seen  a  woman  look  like  that 
before,  and  he  did  not  want  to  see  one  look  like  it  again. 
It  had  rather  upset  him,  damn  it  all ! 

This  sense  of  discomfort  continued  to  linger  in  his 
mind,  when,  after  breakfast,  he  went  his  way.  Still,  he 
did  not  impart  his  doubts  to  anybody,  because,  after  all, 
the  interview  might  have  sprung  from  no  more  than  child- 
ish curiosity;  and  Delia's  manner  might  have  owed  its 
strangeness  to  the  way  in  which  the  sight  of  a  bleeding 
man  had  wrought  on  a  susceptible  mind.  Women  were 
rather  squeamish  in  such  matters;  and  the  fact  that  her 
father  had  hit  another  man  might  perhaps  have  hurt  her 


326  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

sense  of  delicacy.  Indeed,  the  only  terms  in  which  Lord 
Bosket  permitted  himself  to  refer  to  the  subject  at  all  was 
when  he  said  to  Broke  privately  as  he  was  on  the  point  of 
quitting  the  house: 

"  Have  you  had  a  police-court  summons  yet,  Edmund  ? 
If  I  am  on  the  bench,  my  boy,  I  shall  be  dead  against 
you." 

Broke  smiled  a  grim  acknowledgment  of  the  joke. 

At  the  luncheon-table  Mrs.  Broke  commented  on  the 
absence  of  Delia.  Did  anybody  know  why  she  was  not 
there?  Was  she  unwell?  Nobody  knew.  She  had  not 
been  seen  since  breakfast.  The  matter  was  pursued  no 
farther  at  that  time.  Most  probably  she  was  sulking  in 
her  bedroom.  They  believed  her  to  be  capable  of  almost 
any  enormity. 

Her  absence  from  that  pious  rite,  afternoon  tea,  was  not 
noticed,  because  she  was  still  forbidden  their  common 
room.  But  when  dinner-time  came  and  she  was  still 
absent,  her  mother's  inquiries  grew  more  insistent.  A 
maid  was  sent  to  her  room,  only  to  return  with  the  news 
that  she  was  not  there. 

As  the  hours  passed  that  evening,  and  the  child  did  not 
return,  a  feeling  of  uneasiness  grew  abroad.  It  became  a 
subject  of  comment  that  she  had  been  rather  strange  in  her 
manner  of  late;  instances  were  recalled;  reminiscences 
came  unbidden  to  their  minds  of  the  singular  attitude  she 
had  adopted  on  many  questions  that  did  not  admit  of  two 
points  of  view.  But  not  for  a  moment,  however,  did  they 
condescend  to  follow  their  speculations  to  their  logical, 
their  natural,  their  inevitable  conclusion.  They  were  face 
to  face  with  her  absence;  it  could  only  be  accounted  for 
on  one  assumption;  and  that  was  just  the  one  their  dig- 
nity forbade  them  to  make.  The  grotesque  idea  was  in 
the  minds  of  them  all;  but  to  admit  for  a  single  moment 
that  her  strange  unhappiness  had  induced  her  to  run  away 
from  home  was  impossible.  Any  such  admission  would 
be  a  treason  against  the  clan. 

After  Mrs.  Broke  had  made  strenuous  inquiries  of  the 
servants,  the  butler  was  able  to  recall  a  fact  that  was  in- 


TRIBULATIONS  OF  A  MIDDLE-AGED  PEER    327 

vested  now  with  much  significance.  He  mentioned  Miss 
Delia's  ordermg  George  and  himself  to  leave  the  room 
while  they  were  clearing  away  breakfast,  in  order  that  she 
might  have  a  private  interview  with  his  lordship,  who  was 
still  seated  at  the  table. 

"  And  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  ma'am,  she  locked  the  door 
when  we  left  the  room." 

"  You  have  no  idea,  Porson,  what  Miss  Delia  said  to  his 
lordship?" 

Porson  had  not.  Thereupon  Mrs.  Broke,  true  to  her 
instinct  for  action  in  times  of  crisis,  sent  a  mounted  mes- 
senger to  Hipsley  for  the  purpose  of  summoning  her 
brother  to  Covenden  at  once. 

The  man  returned  in  something  under  an  hour  with  the 
news  that  Lord  Bosket  was  from  home  and  that  nothing 
had  been  seen  or  heard  of  him  all  day.  In  the  mean- 
time inquiries  at  the  porter's  lodge  had  elicited  the  fact 
that  Delia  had  been  seen  to  pass  through  the  gates  at  a 
quarter-past  ten  that  morning.  No  attention  had  been 
paid  to  the  direction  she  had  taken  and  she  had  not  been 
seen  to  return. 

On  the  stroke  of  midnight,  however,  their  more  imme- 
diate anxieties  were  allayed  by  the  arrival  of  a  telegram. 
It  ran :  "  Filly  all  right.  Letter  in  the  morning. 
Charles." 

It  had  been  handed  in  in  London. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 

PROVIDENTIAL  BEHAVIOUR   OF   OLD   PEARCE 

LORD  BOSKET'S  wanderings  in  quest  of  an  allevi- 
ation to  his  lot  took  him  in  the  course  of  that  after- 
noon to  a  cricket  match  some  ten  miles  off.  His  taste  had 
the  all-embracing  catholicity  of  the  bom  sportsman. 
Wherever  two  sides  met  or  one  living  thing  was  pitted 
against  another,  the  contest  was  sure  of  his  patronage. 
Two  spiders  on  a  hot  plate,  or  a  pair  of  mongrels  in  an 
entry,  provided  one  was  matched  against  the  other,  mere 
enough  to  excite  his  lust  for  finding  the  winner.  There- 
fore three  o'clock  this  summer  afternoon  found  him 
mingling  with  the  throng  in  Bushmills  Park  that  was  wit- 
nessing the  first  innings  of  the  Free  Foresters  in  their 
game  with  I  Zingari. 

His  arrival  on  the  ground  was  a  signal  for  mild  commo- 
tion. Acquaintances  of  his  own  sex  slapped  him  on  the 
back  and  acclaimed  him  from  every  possible  quarter. 
Long-field-on,  in  the  middle  of  his  after-luncheon  doze 
against  the  extreme  edge  of  the  bowling  screen,  awoke 
sufficiently  to  cry,  "  Hullo,  Bos ! "  Acquaintances  of  the 
opposite  sex  sat  up  and  purred,  confided  gloved  hands  to 
him,  and  fluctuations  of  their  drapery  so  delicate  as  hardly 
to  be  perceptible,  gave  graceful  indications  that  there  was 
room  for  dear  Lord  Bosket  to  come  and  sit  beside  them. 
Everybody  feted  him.  He  was  buttonholed  by  this  per- 
son and  that.  They  were  three-deep  around  him  in  the 
luncheon  tent  to  take  turns  to  engage  in  conversation  with 
him,  whither  he  had  been  escorted  by  another  body  of  his 
friends  to  have  a  drink. 

There  is  no  man  who  enjoys  the  popularity  of  him  with 
a  reputation  for  "  manners  of  the  heart."  This  gift  of 
heaven  makes  its  appeal  to  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men. 

328 


BEHAVIOUR  OF  OLD  PEARCE  329 

Lord  Bosket's  naivete  was  an  oasis  in  the  desert  of  a  self- 
satisfied  austerity.  Old  Bos  was  not  so  confoundedly  su- 
perior. A  reputation  of  this  kind  stood  him  in  far  better 
stead  than  the  most  brilliant  intellectual  gifts  or  a  life  of 
virgin  purity.  Where  the  amiable  weaknesses  of  another 
would  not  have  been  condoned,  no  $:ause  of  offence  was  to 
be  found  in  this  popular  idol. 

In  the  course  of  an  hour  Lord  Bosket  had  disengaged 
himself  from  several  groups  of  these  clamorous  persons, 
ultimately  to  fall  into  the  clutches  of  a  celebrated  sporting 
baronet  who  lived  in  the  neighbourhood.  There  are  gen- 
erally two  characteristics  which  are  held  to  distinguish 
members  of  this  honourable  order;  they  are  invariably 
"  sporting,"  and  almost  as  invariably  "  celebrated."  This 
one  was  of  the  true  genius  who  keeps  more  "  gees  "  in  his 
stable  than  he  does  in  his  vocabulary.  He  was  of  the 
most  familiar  type  of  celebrated  sporting  baronet  that  tra- 
dition has  made  dear,  which  affects  a  high  and  square 
felt  hat,  snuff-coloured  clothes,  a  horseshoe  pin,  and 
brown  gaiters.  For  the  rest  he  had  the  ruddy  bluff  look 
of  a  yeoman  farmer,  with  brusquerie  and  absence  of  man- 
ners to  match. 

"  How  are  you.  Bos  ?  "  he  said  heartily.  "  Fine  day  for 
the  race." 

"  Devilish,"  said  my  lord.     "  Come  and  have  a  drink." 

"  Don't  mind.  I've  got  something  to  tell,  only  I  can't 
think  what  it  is." 

"  Fancy  anything  for  the  July  meetin'  ?  " 

"  The  Dwarf ;  and  Gub  Gub  for  a  place.  Now,  what 
is  it  I  want  to  tell  you  ?     Something — something  funny." 

"  Seen  the  weights  for  Newmarket  ?  " 

"  No.  Now  I've  got  it.  A  sing'lar  thing  I  saw  this 
mornin'.     One  of  those  nieces  of  yours." 

"  What,  what  Pearce  ?  "  said  Lord  Bosket.  Something 
had  given  a  great  leap  under  his  waistcoat. 

"  I  think  it  must  have  been  the  youngest  of  'em,  if  I 
remember  'em  right." 

"  Well,  well  Pearce !  "  The  athletic  performance  under 
Lord  Bosket's  waistcoat  had  been  repeated. 


330  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

*'  I  met  her  walkin'  along  the  high-road  covered  up  to 
the  neck  in  dust/' 

''  When — this  mornin'  ?     Nothing  very  funny  in  that." 

"  You  hold  on  a  bit,  my  son.  I'm  comin'  to  the  funny 
part.  She  stopped  me  and  said,  '  If  you  please  is  this  the 
way  to  London  ? '  I  told  her  if  she  walked  another  forty 
miles  or  so  along  it,  she  would  find  herself  about  there. 
If  she  had  started  from  her  place  she  must  have  walked 
more  than  ten  already,  and  a  broilin'  hot  day.  I  couldn't 
understand  it  at  all.  It  seemed  a  sing'lar  thing  for  one 
of  your  little  chestnuts  to  ask  a  question  like  that,  and  to 
ask  it  as  though  she  meant  to  do  every  yard  of  the  dis- 
tance on  her  flat  feet.  I  wanted  to  tell  you.  Bos;  in  my 
opinion  it's  a  thing  you  ought  to  know." 

"  It  couldn't  ha'  been  one  o'  my  fillies." 

Conviction  was  grievously  lacking  in  the  tone  of  Delia's 
uncle. 

"  Don't  you  bother  your  head  about  that,  my  boy.  Do 
you  think  I  don't  know  one  of  that  kennel  when  I  see  one  ? 
Her  nose  was  one  of  the  old  pattern,  or  my  eyesight's 
failin'.     Edmund  himself  doesn't  carry  a  better." 

"  Go  on,  Pearce,  nose  isn't  everything." 

"  It  is  with  that  kennel,  my  boy.  I'll  own  when  I  first 
saw  her  I  thought  she  was  too  handsome  to  be  one  of  your 
litter.  She'd  got  two  eyes  to  her  like  a  pair  of  stars,  and 
that  blue  the  sky  was  a  fool  to  'em.  She  was  a  nailer. 
I  don't  mind  tellin'  you.  Bos,  that  when  I  saw  that  thor- 
oughbred tit  of  yours  marching  along  with  her  chin  up, 
and  as  proud  and  dainty  on  her  feet  as  a  three-year-old, 
I  thought  her  a  stepper." 

Delia's  uncle  gave  vent  to  his  feelings  in  a  whistle  that 
was  very  deep  and  long. 

"  Well,  I  am  damned !  Come  and  have  a  drink,  Pearce. 
This  is  a  nice  how-d'ye-do ! " 

Further  libation  in  the  tent  brought  no  comfort  to 
Delia's  uncle.  Her  behaviour  at  the  breakfast-table  had 
been  bitten  too  sharply  in  his  mind.  He  began  to  blame 
himself  bitterly,  as  his  habit  was  when  things  went  awry, 
on  the  score  of  his  own  folly.     He  ought  to  have  known 


BEHAVIOUR  OF  OLD  PEARCE  331 

she  was  up  to  something.  He  ought  to  have  known  that 
no  Httle  filly  had  a  right  to  look  as  she  had  looked  that 
morning.  She  might  well  have  a  rum  manner,  if  she  had 
made  up  her  mind  to  run  away  from  home.  But  he  could 
not  believe  one  of  his  nieces  to  be  capable  of  such  an  act. 
They  were  the  last  people  in  the  world  to  do  such  a  thing. 
What  would  her  father  say?  Whatever  had  possessed 
her! 

In  the  course  of  the  next  quarter  of  an  hour  his  mind, 
shackled  in  whisky  as  it  was,  had  led  him  to  conclude 
that  there  was  only  one  thing  to  do.  He  must  go  after 
her  at  once.  The  road  to  London  ran  by  the  gates  of 
Bushmills  Park,  and  London  was  clearly  her  destination. 
As  he  climbed  into  his  trap  and  took  the  reins  from  his 
man,  and  trotted  away  on  his  absurd  errand,  the  incredible 
folly  of  the  little  fool  recurred  to  him.  To  walk  forty 
miles  to  London  in  the  blazing  heat  of  a  midsummer  day 
was  the  maddest  thing  he  had  ever  heard.  If  she  wanted 
to  get  there,  why  did  she  not  have  the  ordinary  common 
sense  to  go  by  train  ?    The  little  fool  must  be  mad ! 

He  would  like  to  ask  also  what  she  proposed  to  do  when 
she  got  there?  She  would  not  be  likely  to  go  to  her 
friends,  mad  as  she  was,  for  that  would  only  be  to  be 
packed  straight  back  home  again.  But  that  was  the  only 
project  she  could  have  in  her  mind.  It  was  clear  that  a 
mere  whim  had  possessed  her;  that  the  heat  of  her  folly 
would  soon  grow  cool,  and  that  she  would  soon  return  to 
the  fold.  But  she  would  catch  it  pretty  hot  when  she  did 
go  home,  if  he  knew  anything  of  her  father!  And  there 
was  not  the  least  doubt  in  the  mind  of  Lord  Bosket  that 
women  were  rum  'uns  when  they  liked.  His  young  niece 
had  wormed  a  secret  out  of  him  that  she  had  no  right  to 
hear;  and  to  express  her  opinion  of  it,  she  calmly  ran 
away  from  home.  He  could  see  very  clearly  now  that  by 
hook  or  by  crook  he  ought  to  have  contrived  to  keep  back 
the  truth. 

As  he  passed  the  milestones  on  the  dusty  road,  the  face 
and  manner  of  his  niece  recurred  to  him  vividly  and  per- 
petually.    Of  course,  he  ought  to  have  known  that  mis- 


332  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

chief  was  brewing.  The  little  tit  had  no  right  to  that 
sort  of  look.  At  the  breakfast-table  it  had  disconcerted 
him ;  and  it  came  out  at  him  now  through  the  broad  sun- 
light, and  through  the  dusty  hedges  that  skirted  the  high- 
way in  a  fashion  that  made  him  as  thoroughly  uncomfort- 
able as  when  he  saw  it  first  that  morning. 

As  the  raking  stride  of  the  horse  took  him  up  hill  and 
down  dale,  and  devoured  the  endless  undulating  ribbon  of 
white  road,  doubt  invaded  him.  He  might,  after  all,  be 
on  a  wild  goose  chase.  When  you  looked  at  it  reasonably 
the  thing  seemed  impossible.  If  it  should  turn  out  a  mere 
cock-and-bull  story  on  the  part  of  old  Pearce  how  it 
would  be  told  against  him !  Still,  old  Pearce  was  not  that 
sort  of  feller.  He  had  been  very  circumstantial  about  it 
too,  and  he  was  the  last  man  in  the  world  to  make  an  ass 
of  himself  in  that  way.  All  the  same,  by  the  time  his 
horse's  stride  had  devoured  a  dozen  miles  or  so  of  the 
dusty  road,  the  absurdity  of  his  errand  grew  more  appar- 
ent and  its  sanity  grew  less. 

Nevertheless,  he  continued  to  go  on.  The  phantom  of 
that  child's  face  lured  him  forward  mile  by  mile,  long 
after  cold  reason  had  demanded  that  he  should  return. 
But  no,  he  would  see  this  thing  through.  They  might  have 
the  laugh  of  him  afterwards,  very  likely  they  would,  but 
the  sportsman  in  him  was  enough  of  itself  to  take  him  all 
the  way.  He  stopped  twice  at  wayside  inns,  ostensibly  to 
seek  information  of  a  young  gal  walking  the  road  to  Lon- 
don, but  also  to  obtain  a  little  light  refreshment  in  a  liquid- 
form.  Of  the  one  they  were  able  to  give  him  cheerfully; 
of  the  other,  alas!  they  had  nothing  to  supply. 

By  the  time  the  dogcart  had  covered  twenty  miles  the 
sun  had  taken  a  very  decided  dip.  It  was  a  perfect  even- 
ing of  early  summer.  Mellow  light  suffused  the  .clover; 
not  a  leaf  stirred  by  the  roadside,  so  absolutely  still  was 
the  air ;  the  motionless  trees  cast  their  long  shadows  in  the 
dust.  Now  and  then  a  blackbird  hovered  over  hedges,  an 
occasional  hare  ran  along  the  road,  and  rabbits  raced  in 
all  directions,  hoisting  their  little  white  scuts.  It  began 
to  grow  dusk. 


BEHAVIOUR  OF  OLD  PEARCE  333 

The  dubious  tints  of  the  twilight  were  reflected  power- 
fully in  Lord  Bosket.  A  milestone  told  him  that  twelve 
miles  further  on  he  would  be  at  Charing  Cross.  The  odds 
were  very  great  now  against  his  finding  or  overtaking  his 
quarry.  Still  he  was  going  all  the  way.  He  would  never 
hear  the  last  of  the  story  they  would  tell  against  him — 
that  he  drove  to  town  on  a  summer's  evening  from  Bush- 
mills Park  because  old  Pearce  had  told  him  a  cock-and- 
bull  story  about  one  of  his  nieces  asking  the  way  to 
London. 

Still  he  was  going  all  the  way.  To  that  end  he  eased 
the  paces  of  his  horse.  He  looked  at  his  watch ;  it  wanted 
five-and-twenty  minutes  to  nine  o'clock.  As  nearly  as  he 
could  calculate  he  had  now  come  twenty-five  miles  from 
Bushmills  Park;  about  thirty-five  from  Hipsley;  and 
thirty-seven  and  a  half  from  Covenden.  It  was  hardly 
likely  that  she  had  walked  so  far  through  all  this  dust,  in 
such  a  broiling  day  of  midsummer.  The  odds  were  a 
thousand  to  five  that  he  had  missed  her,  or  that  she  had 
never  come. 

His  hopefulness  was  not  increased  by  the  fact  that  he 
was  beginning  to  feel  decidedly  hungry.  It  was  already 
past  the  hour  at  which  he  preferred  to  dine ;  and  it  would 
be  a  good  six  miles  yet  before  he  touched  the  suburbs  of 
London.  Hereabouts  he  came  to  a  hill;  and  in  walking 
up  his  horse  he  met  a  farmer  in  a  covered  cart  coming 
down. 

"  I  say,"  he  called  out,  "  have  you  met  a  young  gal  along 
the  road  ?    Don't  happen  to  have  seen  one,  do  you  ?  " 

"  Aye,"  said  the  farmer,  "  that  I  have.  I  passed  one 
about  a  quarter  of  a  mile  back,  covered  in  dust  about  as 
white  as  a  miller.  Looks  as  though  she's  been  tramping 
it  all  day.  She's  that  lame  she  can  hardly  put  one  foot 
towards  afore  the  other.  Better  give  her  a  lift,  guv'nor, 
if  you  are  going  her  way.  Her  goose  is  about  cooked,  I 
reckon." 

"  Well,  I  am  damned,"  said  Lord  Bosket,  pressing  on. 

The  sun  was  much  lower  now.  The  golden  crimson 
with  which  all  the  sky  behind  him  had  been  painted  had 


334  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

deepened  to  tints  more  complex.  There  was  the  faint 
outline  of  a  morn.  The  evening  was  growing  chill. 
Faced  by  a  stiffer  hill  than  usual,  he  took  his  tired  horse 
carefully  to  the  top.  On  the  crest  a  heap  of  flints  for 
road-mending  purposes  had  been  shot  beside  a  hedge,  and 
seated  on  them  was  the  little  figure  of  a  woman. 

She  was  clad  from  head  to  foot  in  a  mantle  of  dust, 
about  as  white  as  a  miller,  as  the  farmer  had  said.  She 
was  breathing  hard;  there  was  not  a  speck  of  colour  in 
her  face;  she  had  taken  off  her  straw  hat,  but  her  hair,  a 
charming  fawn  colour,  had  not  lost  its  ordered  look.  Her 
distressed  state  was  cruelly  apparent,  and  the  limp  lines 
into  which  her  small  figure  fell  caused  Lord  Bosket  to 
give  a  grunt  of  dismay. 

Delia  did  not  see  her  uncle  at  first.  Her  eyes  were 
turned  towards  the  long  and  deep  valley  into  which  this 
hill  ran  down.  They  were  fixed  with  a  concentrated  in- 
tensity on  the  stretch  of  white  road,  ankle  deep  in  dust, 
on  which  the  shadows  were  beginning  to  creep  darker  and 
darker:  the  road  to  London.  Her  hands  were  clasped 
round  her  knees.  Hearing  the  sound  of  wheels  hard  by, 
she  turned  her  head  in  such  a  way  as  to  denote  acute 
pain  if  she  turned  it  at  all.  Without  looking  at  vehicle 
or  driver,  she  asked: 

"  How  far  to  London,  please  ?  " 

"  You  damned  young  fool ! "  was  the  answer  she  re- 
ceived. 

Already  it  had  struck  Lord  Bosket  with  dismay  that 
the  tone  in  which  she  asked  the  question  was  that  of  their 
interview  at  the  breakfast-table.  Sh.e  did  not  appear  to 
recognize  the  voice  of  her  uncle,  but  at  his  words  she 
turned  her  head  towards  him  with  a  bewildered  expres- 
sion. The  intolerable  weariness  of  her  face  had  something 
of  the  grey  look  of  death. 

Lord  Bosket  was  already  out  of  his  dogcart. 

"  You  damned  young  fool !  "  he  said  roughly. 

Delia  did  not  reply.  Her  lips  were  pressed  very  tight, 
so  tight  that  she  seemed  not  to  have  the  energy  to  force 
them  apart. 


BEHAVIOUR  OF  OLD  PEARCE  335 

Her  Uncle  Charles,  meeting  with  no  response,  stood  in 
front  of  her  in  his  favourite  attitude,  with  his  hands 
thrust  deep  in  the  pockets  of  his  breeches.  He  looked  her 
over  keenly.     She  was  dead  beat. 

"  Poor  little  girl." 

He  then  gave  vent  to  a  peculiar  long-drawn  whistle. 
His  next  act  was  to  take  from  an  inside  pocket  of  his 
covert  coat  a  flask  containing  his  favourite  stimulant. 

''  Down  with  it,"  he  said  gruffly. 

Delia  seized  the  cup  with  something  akin  to  ferocity, 
and  without  giving  the  slightest  heed  to  the  contents, 
drank  eagerly. 

"  Poor  little  gal,"  said  Lord  Bosket,  speaking  in  the 
manner  of  one  who  suffers  from  a  sore  throat. 

There  was  that  in  her  act  which  suddenly  brought  the 
tears  to  his  eyes.  He  wiped  them  ruefully  with  a  red 
handkerchief,  and  then  blew  his  nose  with  great  violence. 

"  I  am  old  enough  to  know  better,"  he  muttered  to  his 
man  as  he  turned  away  abruptly  from  the  cause  of  all  this 
inconvenience.  Presently  having  resumed  a  sufficient 
command  of  himself  to  venture  to  address  his  young 
niece,  who  still  sat  motionless  on  the  heap  of  stones,  he 
proceeded  to  do  so  in  a  voice  of  hoarse  expostulation : 

"  You  have  walked  forty  miles  as  near  as  damn  it,  in 
all  that  broilin'  sun,  and  if  you  have  not  about  done  for 
yourself  it's  God's  mercy,  that's  all  I've  got  to  say  about 
it.  I  will  drive  you  into  London,  and  we  shall  have  to  go 
home  by  train  in  the  rnornin'.  You  are  in  no  condition 
to  go  back  to-night.  We  must  have  you  between  the  blan- 
kets as  soon  as  we  can.  It  is  the  maddest  business  I  ever 
heard  of  in  my  life.  However,  this  is  not  the  time  for 
talk.     Into  the  trap  with  you." 

He  made  to  take  the  small  figure  in  his  arms,  for  the 
purpose  of  hoisting  it  into  the  vehicle,  as  it  showed  no 
signs  of  moving  of  its  own  accord. 

"  Please,  Uncle  Charles,  you  are  not  to  touch  me." 

Her  tone  and  manner  were  as  extraordinarily  uncom- 
promising as  they  were  at  nine  o'clock  that  morning. 

"  What,  what  ?  "  said  her  uncle,  taken  aback. 


336  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

Delia  did  not  move  an  inch.  Lord  Bosket  approached 
indecisively. 

"  Please  do  not  touch  me,  Uncle  Charles." 

"  Not  touch  you,  you  young  fool.  I  ought  to  be  cuttin* 
you  in  half,  miss,  if  I  was  doin'  the  right  thing  by  you. 
Not  touch  you,  indeed !  " 

As  her  uncle  stretched  out  his  hand  to  seize  her,  in  the 
tentative  manner  he  might  seize  a  kitten,  she  made  a  little 
motion  by  which  she  gathered  her  dust-laden  skirts  away 
from  him. 

"  You  must  leave  me.  Uncle  Charles.  I  must  not,  I 
cannot  go  with  you." 

Her  tone  was  absolutely  final.  Already  Lord  Bosket 
was  fully  conscious  of  his  impotence  before  it. 

"  Nonsense ;  never  heard  such  a  thing  in  my  life. 
Where  do  you  think  you  are  goin',  and  what  do  you  think 
is  goin'  to  become  of  you  ?  You  can't  stop  here  all  night, 
that's  a  certainty." 

"  You  will  take  me  to  Covenden.'* 

"  Of  course,  to-morrow." 

"  I  can  never  go  to  Covenden  again." 

Once  more  Lord  Bosket  had  recourse  to  a  long-drawn 
whistle.  He  did  not  know  in  the  least  how  to  handle  such 
an  uncompromising  determination.  He  was  not  fitted  by 
nature  to  do  so.  Here  in  this  overdriven  bit  of  a  thing 
was  a  problem  that  he  had  neither  the  wit  to  understand 
nor  the  strength  to  grapple  with. 

'*  You've  damn  well  got  to,  miss,"  he  said. 

Delia,  however,  stuck  quietly  to  the  other  view. 

"  Come,  don't  be  a  little  silly.  Let  me  put  you  into  the 
trap." 

"  I  will  not  be  put  into  the  trap,  Uncle  Charles." 

"  Rubbish.  You  don't  know  what  you  are  sayin'. 
Come,  now,  be  a  sensible  little  gal,  and  when  you  get  home 
I  will  give  you  a  nice  new  boss  with  four  white  stock- 
ings." 

Lord  Bosket,  completely  baffled,  held  out  his  hand  with 
a  gesture  half  of  anger,  half  of  cajolery.  Delia  closed  her 
eyes  and  hugged  her  knees  tighter. 


BEHAVIOUR  OF  OLD  PEARCE  337 

"  Come  on,  there's  a  good  little  gal." 

He  approached  her  in  the  wary  manner  of  a  cat  stalk- 
ing a  bird,  and  suddenly  put  his  arms  around  her.  She 
was  very  cold  and  trembling  violently. 

"  I  forbid  you  to  touch  me,  Uncle  Charles." 

She  began  to  struggle  fitfully  in  her  uncle's  irresolute 
grasp.     Her  heart  was  beating  wildly  through  her  dress. 

"  I  will  jump  out  of  the  trap,"  she  said. 

With  all  this  decision  of  language  and  behaviour  in  one 
ordinarily  so  docile,  there  was  a  complete  absence  of  emo- 
tion. Her  manner  was  so  calm  that  Lord  Bosket  was 
rather  disconcerted  by  it.  It  struck  him  as  rather  un- 
canny. He  did  not  know  whether  the  poor  little  devil 
had  been  touched  a  bit  by  the  sun  or  what,  but  this  was 
certainly  not  the  timid  petted  little  filly  he  had  always 
known.  There  was  a  dreary  piteousness  about  her  too 
that  made  him  take  in  his  breath  rather  sharply.  He 
would  be  quite  justified  in  resorting  to  compulsion  in  a 
case  of  this  kind;  but  even  as  he  gathered  himself  to 
make  use  of  it  a  sudden  nausea  came  upon  him.  No,  he 
was  damned  if  he  could  be  rough  with  her.  Even  if  her 
parents  afterwards  blamed  him  bitterly,  he  somehow  did 
not  feel  equal  to  anything  of  that  kind. 

"  You  must  tell  me  all  about  it  then,"  he  said,  in  tones 
which,  in  spite  of  himself,  were  conciliatory.  Then  realiz- 
ing somewhat  to  his  dismay  that  they  were  of  that  nature 
when  they  were  certainly  not  intended  to  be  so,  he  gave 
himself  up  to  luxury.  He  drew  her  cold  face  to  his  coat 
and  gave  it  a  hug.  "  Tell  your  damned  old  fool  of  an 
uncle  all  about  it,  you  poor  little  soul.  No  harm  shall 
come  to  you,  I'll  give  you  my  word." 

"  Promise,  Uncle  Charles,  you  will  not  take  me  to  Cov- 
enden."  She  allowed  her  wan  cheek  to  lie  an  instant 
against  him  and  closed  her  eyes. 

"  I  can't  do  that,  you  know.     I  would  if  I  could,  but  I 
mustn't,  you  know.     I'm  bound  to  see  you  home  all  right." 
Delia,  half  insensible  in  his  arms  from  the  combined 
effects  of  hunger,  weariness,  and  thirst,  remained  abso- 
lutely inexorable  on  that  point.     More  and  more  fully  did 


338  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

Lord  Bosket  realize  that  his  clay  was  not  anything  like 
stern  enough  to  cope  with  such  a  stony  resolution.  He 
saw  clearly  that  unless  he  gave  his  promise  no  progress 
was  possible.  Things  would  remain  at  a  deadlock,  and 
already  it  was  nearly  pitch  dark.  "  She  ought  to  have  a 
damned  good  hidin',  but  Fm  hanged  if  I  can  give  it  her," 
he  recorded  for  his  own  personal  information  as  he  hugged 
her  tighter  to  his  coat. 

**  Come,  come,  miss,  no  damn  nonsense !  " 

Gently  he  tried  to  lift  her.  At  once  she  began  to  strug- 
gle convulsively. 

"  Promise,  Uncle  Charles." 

"  I  can't,  you  know.     I  mustn't,  you  know." 

"  Leave  me  then.  Uncle  Charles:     I  must  go  on  alone." 

With  a  quickness  that  was  amazing  she  had  slipped  his 
grasp. 

Lord  Bosket  knew  already  that  he  was  defeated.  Good 
nature  is  an  asset  from  the  social  point  of  view,  but  there 
are  occasions  in  life  when  it  would  seem  to  have  its  draw- 
backs also. 

"  Very  well,  then,"  he  said  gruffly,  "  I  give  in ;  I  prom- 
ise ;  I  chuck  up  the  sponge." 

"  You  promise  also  not  to  take  me  to  Grosvenor  Street, 
Uncle  Charles?" 

"  I  may  be  a  fool,  but  I  am  not  a  damned  fool,  I  hope," 
said  my  lord,  with  some  alacrity.  The  undesirability  of 
his  own  house  as  a  place  of  refuge  hardly  required  to  be 
stated. 

"  Where  are  we  to  go,  Uncle  Charles  ?  " 

"  God  knows  !  "  . 

On  the  strength  of  this  assurance  Delia  climbed  up  into 
the  dogcart.  It  caused  her  uncle  to  shed  more  curses  to 
observe,  as  she  did  so,  that  she  was  dead  lame.  Twice 
she  nearly  missed  her  foothold  on  the  awkward  step,  and 
when  at  last  she  got  into  the  vehicle  she  fell  against  the 
seat.  It  was  still  a  soft-breathing  summer  evening,  but 
faintly  chill,  yet  her  uncle  was  surprised  to  find  how  cold 
she  was  as  she  nestled  in  the  small  space  between  him  and 
the  man.     He  took  off  his  covert  coat,  wrapped  her  in  it, 


BEHAVIOUR  OF  OLD  PEARCE  339 

placed  one  arm  tenderly  round  her,  and  drew  her  cold 
cheeks  against  his  jacket. 

*'  If  you  must  go  to  London,  why  did  you  walk,  you 
little  fool?" 

That  absurd  but  palpable  fact  was  something  he  could 
not  dismiss  from  his  mind. 

"  I  had  no  money,"  said  Delia  simply. 

"  As  rotten  a  reason  as  ever  I  heard.  Why  didn't  you 
borrow  a  bit?" 

Certainly  such  a  reason  was  very  odd  and  inadequate. 
But  there  could  be  no  doubt  that  as  far  as  it  went  it  was 
a  sufficient  one.  Suddenly  a  new  thought  started  up  in 
Lord  Bosket  to  harrow  his  well-fed  feelings. 

"  You  are  not  goin'  to  tell  me  that  you  have  been  bak- 
ing in  the  sun  since  ten  o'clock  this  mornin'  without  a 
crumb  to  peck  or  a  drop  to  drink  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Delia. 

"Well,  that's  won  it!" 

Lord  Bosket  was  heard  to  swear  with  hoarse  vehe- 
mence. "  No  money ;  nothing  to  eat !  "  he  repeated  sev- 
eral times  under  his  breath,  apparently  to  impress  the 
incredible  fact  on  his  mind. 

"  Shove  along,  Thompson,"  he  said  to  the  man  impa- 
tiently. 

"  Where,  your  lordship  ?  " 

"  Better  ask  me  another.  I  give  it  up.  I  can't  take 
her  to  the  club  and  I  can't  take  her  to  Grosvenor  Street. 
I  suppose  we  had  better  point  for  one  of  those  barracks 
in  Northumberland  Avenue.  Shove  on,  my  lad ;  poor  old 
Bendy  looks  like  havin'  a  bellyful  this  time  if  he  never 
had  it  before." 

"  And  where  were  you  goin'  to  even  if  you  get  as  far  as 
the  metropolis?  if  I  might  make  so  bold  as  to  inquire," 
the  querulous  and  bewildered  gentleman  demanded  of  his 
niece. 

Delia  did  not  reply. 

"  Come,   out   with  it.     YouVe  got  my   word,    haven't 

you?     I  shall  not  give  you  away,  you  poor  little  devil." 

As  a  token  of  her  confidence  in  her  Uncle  Charles  Delia 


340  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

answered :  "  I  was  going  to  No.  403  Charing  Cross 
Road." 

**  And  who  the  devil  Hves  at  403  Charing  Cross  Road  ?  " 

"  It  is  the  office  of  the  International  Review/' 

"  Oh,  indeed !  Very  interestin'  bit  of  information. 
But  I  don't  quite  see  what  that  was  goin'  to  do  for  you." 

"  Mr.  Porter  is  on  the  staff  of  the  International  Re- 
view." 

"  Oh,  indeed !  Very  interesting  too.  And  very  nice 
for  the  International  Review.  But  who  the  deuce  is  Mr. 
Porter?" 

Now  that  Delia  was  committed  to  her  statement  she  did 
not  flinch  from  making  it. 

"  Mr.  Porter  loves  me.  Uncle  Charles." 

"  Oh,  does  he !  "  said  her  Uncle  Charles.  "  Very  good 
of  Mr.  Porter,  I'm  sure.  But  I  don't  quite  follow.  What 
the  devil  has  all  this  got  to  do  with  your  runnin'  away 
from  home?" 

"  I  love  him,"  said  Delia,  with  her  singular  precision  of 
manner  and  phrase. 

"  Oh,  do  you !     Nice  for  Mr.  Porter." 

Lord  Bosket  could  not  repress  a  rather  weary  guffaw 
which  he  proceeded  to  impart  to  the  air  of  the  night. 

"  These  are  all  very  excellent  reasons,  miss,  I  don't 
doubt;  and  I  daresay  it  is  because  I  am  such  a  fuddle- 
headed  sort  of  a  feller  that  I  don't  see  what  they  have  to 
do  with  the  matter  at  all.  You  walk  forty  miles  on  the 
hottest  day  of  the  year,  with  not  a  crumb  to  eat  or  a  drop 
to  drink,  and  not  a  sou  in  your  pocket,  in  order  that  if  you 
are  lucky  you  will  be  able  to  drop  down  dead  on  the  door- 
step of  a  locked-up  newspaper  office  in  the  Charing  Cross 
Road  about  midnight.  I  daresay  I  am  rather  wooden- 
headed,  but  I  am  damned  if  I  can  quite  see " 

Lord  Bosket  finished  his  somewhat  impassioned  sum- 
ming up  of  the  case  as  it  presented  itself  to  his  judicial 
mind  with  a  deep  but  wholly  irrelevant  malediction.  For 
a  ray  of  light  had  burst  upon  him  at  last.  There  was  the 
whole  thing.  Porter  was  the  young  man  over  whom  Ed- 
mund had  made  such  an  ass  of  himself.     Once  more  Lord 


BEHAVIOUR  OF  OLD  PEARCE  341 

Bosket  issued  his  peculiar,  long-drawn  whistle  to  the  air 
of  the  night. 

Yes,  there  was  the  whole  matter  as  plain  as  your  hand. 
And  a  nice  how-d'ye-do  it  was !  There  would  be  the  devil 
to  pay.  He  had  let  himself  in  for  a  good  thing,  hanged 
if  he  had  not!  The  sense  of  his  position  oppressed  him 
acutely.  If  ever  he  had  any  tact,  any  delicacy,  any 
worldly  wisdom — and  very  grievously  did  he  doubt 
whether  he  had  ever  had  any  of  these  desirable  qualities 
— he  must  prepare  to  use  them  now.  Edmund  could  be 
an  ugly  brute  when  once  you  got  his  blood  up.  And  it 
seemed  that  this  fragile  slip  of  a  thing,  not  much  bigger 
than  your  hat,  was  no  unworthy  daughter  of  such  a  sire. 
She  would  have  died  on  that  heap  of  flints  by  the  side  of 
the  road  rather  than  go  back  to  her  home. 

However,  this  was  not  the  time  to  dwell  on  the  dilemma 
in  which  he  found  himself  involved.  The  lamp-posts  of 
suburban  London  were  already  flitting  past ;  it  had  become 
quite  dark;  and  the  cold  burden  in  his  arms  had  grown  a 
good  deal  heavier.  His  immediate  thoughts  must  be  for 
that  worn-out  and  famished  slip  of  womanhood  nestling 
to  his  coat  for  warmth,  who,  dead  lame  and  starving  as 
she  was,  was  prepared  to  die  rather  than  give  in. 

"  It's  God's  mercy  I  met  old  Pearce !  Poor  little  gal ! 
Poor  little  gal !     Rum  cattle,  women,  when  they  like !  " 

Hardly  had  he  uttered  this  pearl  of  wisdom  for  his  own 
consolation,  when  a  new  discovery  obtruded  itself  upon 
him.    His  young  niece  was  become  insensible  in  his  arms. 


CHAPTER  XXXV 

IN   WHICH   WE   FIND  THE  FIRST   COMEDIAN   ONCE  MORE  IN 
A  HAPPY  VEIN 

THE  letter  Lord  Bosket  addressed  to  Covenden  at  a 
late  hour  that  evening  from  an  hotel  in  Northum- 
berland Avenue,  was  the  longest  and  most  singular  he  had 
ever  felt  called  upon  to  pen  in  the  whole  course  of  his 
unliterary  life.  With  a  sure  instinct  that  was  worth  more 
than  a  superficial  observation  of  men  and  things,  he  ad- 
dressed this  lucubration  to  his  sister  rather  than  to  Delia's 
father.  A  superficial  observer  would  have  had  no  hesi- 
tation in  saying  that  the  child  was  far  less  likely  to  meet 
with  tender  handling  from  her  mother,  than  from  him 
whose  affection  for  his  girls,  one  and  all,  was  so  great; 
but  her  uncle's  instinct  taught  him  better.  And  instinct 
is  a  strange  matter. 

When  on  the  following  morning  Mrs.  Broke  found  an 
envelope  addressed  in  her  brother's  crude  hand,  at  the 
side  of  her  plate,  she  smiled  faintly  to  observe  its  bulk. 
As  a  rule  Lord  Bosket  conducted  his  correspondence  by 
telegraph.  History  was  indeed  getting  itself  written  at 
a  furious  pace  when  in  a  single  day  he  had  recourse  to 
eight  pages  of  hotel  writing-paper  to  keep  up  with  the 
march  of  events. 

Lord  Bosket  began  his  letter  with  the  assurance  that  he, 
and  he  alone,  was  to  blame  for  what  had  occurred.  Had 
he  only  used  discretion  things  might  have  been  otherwise. 
He  had  inadvertently  let  drop  at  the  breakfast-table  that 
morning  the  details  of  a  certain  incident  with  which  Ed- 
mund was  very  well  acquainted.  My  lord  then  proceeded 
to  give  a  resume  of  the  providential  behaviour  of  old 
Pearce  at  the  cricket  match;  the  subsequent  pursuit  and 
capture  of  the  runaway;  and  he  went  on  to  draw  a  vivid 

342 


FIRST  COMEDIAN  IN  A  HAPPY  VEIN     343 

picture  of  the  state  Delia  was  in  physically  and  mentally, 
and  laid  stress  on  the  fact,  with  the  aid  of  double  lines 
under  the  words,  that  "  she  had  walked  forty  miles  as 
near  as  damn  it,"  without  a  penny  in  her  pocket  to  buy 
food  or  drink ;  without  protection  from  the  sun ;  and  that, 
dead  lame  as  she  was,  had  it  not  been  by  God's  mercy 
that  he  had  overtaken  her,  there  was  that  in  her  that 
would  have  carried  her  on  until  she  fell  down  dead  upon 
the  road. 

Her  uncle  concluded  with  an  appeal.  He  was  sure  that 
her  mother  would  see  the  thing  in  a  proper  light,  and 
make  things  as  easy  for  the  poor  little  devil  as  she  could ; 
but  somehow  he  had  not  the  same  confidence  in  Edmund. 
Edmund  had  a  heart  of  gold,  provided  you  did  not  put  his 
back  up,  but  if  once  you  did  that  he  was  about  the  most 
unreasonable  man  in  the  world.  She  must  do  what  she 
could  to  get  him  not  to  be  too  hard  on  the  little  filly.  He 
supposed,  strictly  speaking,  she  ought  to  have  a  good  hid- 
ing, or  something  of  that  kind,  but  he  was  sure  that  such 
a  course  would  be  a  great  mistake.  If  anything  was  to 
be  done,  it  would  have  to  be  done  by  kindness.  Further, 
his  own  position  in  the  matter  was  one  of  difficulty.  They 
would  look  to  him,  of  course,  to  bring  her  home  at  once ; 
but  he  could  hardly  do  that,  because  he  had  already  given 
his  word  not  to  do  so.  He  was  obliged  to  make  a  promise 
to  the  little  fool  to  remain  absolutely  neutral  in  the  mat- 
ter, or  nothing  could  have  been  done  with  her  without  re- 
sorting to  brute  force;  and  he  hoped  they  did  not  expect 
him  to  do  that.  He  felt  himself  to  be  rather  in  the  posi- 
tion of  a  judge  who  had  to  look  after  the  interests  of  both 
parties;  of  a  judge  who  had  to  be  impartial  and  see  that 
justice  was  properly  administered,  without  committing 
himself  to  either  side. 

The  tone  of  his  long  letter,  however,  was  hard  to  recon- 
cile with  this  judicial  attitude.  It  was  special  pleading,  all 
compact.  There  seemed  no  attempt  in  it,  as  far  as  his 
sister  could  see,  to  observe  the  neutrality  of  which  he 
made  a  profession.  Finally  he  said :  *'  Of  course,  her 
behaviour  has  been  that  of  the  damnedest  little  donkey, 


344  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

but  you  can  tell  Edmund  from  me  that  if  he  had  seen  her 
dead  beat  on  that  heap  of  stones  by  the  side  of  the  road, 
and  night  coming  on,  a  few  things  might  have  been  brought 
home  to  him.  Whatever  she's  done  she  is  about  the  finest 
little  filly  I  have  seen  in  my  life,  and  that  is  saying  a  lot, 
because  I  flatter  myself  I  know  a  good  one  when  I  see 
one.  There  are  points  about  the  poor  little  devil  that 
make  you  wonder.  She  is  asleep  now ;  and  although  she 
has  been  through  a  great  deal,  I  do  not  think  you  need 
be  anxious  about  her.  I  let  a  doctor  see  her  as  soon  as 
we  got  here,  and  we  were  careful  about  her  feed  and  put 
her  to  bed  with  hot-water  bottles.  Her  feet  are  in  a 
shocking  state ;  the  little  fool  came  away  in  a  pair  of  thin 
shoes ;  and  I  am  not  sure  that  the  sun  has  not  caught  her 
head  a  bit.  But  the  doctor  says  a  night's  rest  will  do 
wonders.  I  am  going  to  stay  with  her  here  until  you  de- 
cide what  is  to  be  done.  Do  not  blame  me  for  not  bring- 
ing her  back.     P.S. — Mum's  the  word  with  the  missis." 

Mrs.  Broke  took  the  first  opportunity  of  discussing  this 
letter  with  Broke.  They  had  both  passed  a  peculiarly  un- 
happy night,  but  this  communication  did  not  bring  them 
peace  of  mind.  Broke  read  every  line  with  care  and 
solemnity.  When  he  returned  it  to  her  after  so  doing,  his 
face  was  the  colour  of  the  grey-tinted  paper  on  which  it 
was  written. 

He  did  not  speak. 

"  We  are  dead  out  of  luck,"  said  his  wife,  looking  at 
him  rather  nervously.  Of  late  she  had  learned  to  hold 
him  in  fear. 

Broke  still  did  not  speak. 

"  I  think  Charles  has  acted  very  well,"  she  said,  with  no 
attempt  to  conceal  the  anxiety  of  her  tone.  "  And  for 
once,  Edmund,  I  do  hope  you  will  allow  Charles  to  be  a 
judge.  I  am  perfectly  convinced  that  his  attitude  is  the 
right  one.  We  have  alienated  the  child,  and  if  we  are 
to  win  her  back  again,  we  can  only  hope  to  do  so  by  ex- 
hibiting the  greatest  tact." 

"  What  do  you  mean  ? "  said  Broke  in  a  slow,  husky 
tone. 


FIRST  COMEDIAN  IN  A  HAPPY  VEIN     345 

"  Is  there  a  need  to  explain  ?  It  is  easy  to  see  from  the 
way  in  which  Charles  has  worded  his  letter  that  the  child 
has  refused  to  return." 

He  turned  his  grim  eyes  on  his  wife. 

"  You  talk  as  though  you  want  her  to  return." 

"  Of  course — of  course,"  she  said,  with  a  slight  air  of 
bewilderment.  "Of  course,  Edmund,  we  want  her  to  re- 
turn." 

The  limp  lines  seemed  to  fall  from  Broke's  bearing. 

"  You  must  set  your  mind  at  rest  on  that  point.  She 
will  never  come  back  here." 

The  deliberately  chosen  syllables  seemed  to  arrest  the 
blood  in  her  heart. 

"  I — I  don't  understand,"  she  said,  with  her  hands  going 
up  to  her  face. 

The  dismal  weariness  in  her  voice  was  a  little  piteous. 

Man  and  wife  confronted  one  another  like  a  pair  of 
phantoms  who  afflict  each  other  with  their  presence. 
Broke  saw  the  look  on  her  face  and  heard  the  tones  of 
her  voice.  He  laid  his  hand  on  her  shoulder  firmly,  but 
with  a  certain  kindness. 

"  Steady,  old  girl,"  he  said. 

"  It  is  a  little  inhuman,"  said  the  mother.    There  was  a 
chord  in  her  that  he  heard  then  for  the  first  time. 
.    Broke  waved  away  the  accusation  with  his  hands. 

"  I  must  decline  to  discuss  it,"  he  said.  "  It  does  not 
admit  of  discussion." 

But  it  was  impossible  for  Mrs.  Broke  to  deliver  up  this 
second  child  without  a  struggle,  a  last  convulsive  struggle 
against  unreason.  The  loss  of  her  son  had  told  on  her 
more  heavily  than  anybody  could  have  guessed.  She  had 
to  the  full  the  feminine  desire  for  guidance  in  matters  of 
importance,  for  she  was  too  wise  to  hold  herself  in  any 
way  above  her  sex.  Her  intelligence  was  too  keen  to 
allow  her  to  interpose  it  unwisely;  but  she  was  pre-emi- 
nently a  woman  and  a  mother.  She  could  not  stand  by 
while  a  second  child  of  her  flesh  perished  before  her  eyes, 
without  stretching  out  a  hand  to  snatch  it  from  the  abyss. 

'*  Edmund,"  said  the  bowed  woman,  clutching  at  a  table 


346  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

for  support,  "  you  cannot  know  what  you  say.  It  is  in- 
human to  punish  an  act  of  childish  folly  so  inexorably. 
She  is  but  a  child.     She  did  not  know  what  she  did." 

Broke  made  an  imperious  wave  of  the  arm,  as  though 
to  put  her  off.  His  head  was  aloof,  but  she  could  discern 
dimly  that  the  awful,  clenched,  ashen  look  was  in  him  still. 

"  You  cannot  do  it,  Edmund.  You  shall  not  do  it. 
Your  son  was  of  your  own  sex,  and  it  was  your  right  to 
deal  with  him  as  you  thought  proper.  But  you  shall  not 
treat  a  woman  in  that  manner ;  you  shall  not,  indeed." 

Broke  was  like  a  statue. 

"  I  claim  the  prescriptive  right  of  a  mother  to  deal  with 
my  children  of  my  own  sex." 

"  You  have  no  jurisdiction  in  a  matter  of  this  kind," 
said  Broke  in  a  dry  voice. 

"  Then  I  claim  the  consideration  my  sex  is  accustomed 
to  receive  in  civilized  communities.  It  is  an  act  of  bar- 
barism to  apply  the  same  code  to  women  as  to  men." 

"  They  can  be  equally  guilty." 

"  The  first  precept  of  our  civilization  should  teach  us  to 
condone  their  faults." 

"  I  shall  not  make  phrases  with  you.  It  is  enough  that 
in  any  circumstances  I  decline  to  condone  disloyalty  in 
man  or  woman  of  my  name." 

"  You  cannot  mean  it,  Edmund.  You  cannot  know 
what  it  involves.     Whatever  is  to  become  of  her !  " 

Buffeted  by  this  brutality,  her  strength  was  failing. 
Her  voice  was  growing  high  and  weak. 

"  I  have  thought  about  that,"  said  Broke ;  "  I  am  about 
to  write  to  Charles  to  place  her  in  her  old  school  at 
Brighton  until  she  is  of  age.  Until  then  I  will  maintain 
her  there,  because  the  law  requires  it." 

"  And  afterwards  ?  "  She  spoke  with  an  eagerness  that 
sprang  from  an  intolerable  anguish. 

"  As  far  as  I  am  concerned  personally  there  is  no  after- 
wards." 

'*  You  cannot  mean  that !  Surely  you  will  then  consent 
to  receive  her  again.  After  she  has  expiated  her  offence 
you  will  take  her  back." 


FIRST  COMEDIAN  IN  A  HAPPY  VEIN     347 

"  There  are  offences  that  nothing  can  expiate,  that  noth- 
ing can  condone.  Disloyalty  is  the  first  of  them.  And 
as  you  force  me  to  say  it,  Jane,  let  me  tell  you  that  if  it 
were  possible,  the  sex  makes  it  the  more  abominable." 

"  It  is  the  savage  speaking  again,"  said  the  mother 
drearily. 

"  I  can  bear  your  taunts,"  said  her  husband.  "  Cowards 
are  often  as  quick  with  their  tongues  as  they  are  with 
their  heels." 

Mrs.  Broke  quivered.  His  dreadful  unreason  was  un- 
nerving her. 

"  It  is  possible  to  drive  even  a  woman  too  far,  Ed- 
mund.    I  must  warn  you." 

"Poor  fool!" 

His  sneer  turned  her  faithful  blood  into  ice. 

"  I  suppose  you  know,"  he  said,  with  a  brutal  absence 
of  vehemence,  "  that  the  abettors  of  the  guilty  run  the 
danger  of  being  arraigned.  Don't  trespass  too  far.  A 
man  is  not  very  patient  when  he  finds  the  very  foundations 
of  his  house  dry-rotted  with  disloyalty." 

The  wife  of  thirty  years  blushed  a  vivid  colour,  and 
recoiled  from  the  tone  with  horror  taking  her  by  the  heart. 
A  full  minute  of  silence  passed,  in  which  the  woman  of 
wisdom  and  mastery  fought  passionately  for  self-control. 
After  a  frantic  struggle  she  recovered  it. 

"  You  must  please  forgive  me,  Edmund,"  she  said,  with 
an  utter  humility  of  voice  and  manner,  "  if  the  words  I 
have  used  have  been  other  than — than  you  think  they 
ought  to  have  been.  Women  have  not  the  hardihood  of 
men  if  you  deal  them  blows  over  the  heart.  Nature  makes 
us  cry  out  a  little  wildly  sometimes." 

"  I — ah — forgive  you." 

Broke's  magnanimity  was  generally  admired  by  the 
critics  in  the  stalls  of  the  Olympian  Theatre. 

"  Will  you  not  consent  to  receive  her  again  ?  "  said  the 
unhappy  woman,  immediately  relapsing  out  of  the  self- 
control  she  had  with  so  much  difficulty  imposed  upon 
herself,  now  that  the  voice  of  her  lord  sounded  human 
once  more. 


348  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

Broke  had  no  desire  to  be  harsh  with  one  whom  a  long 
experience  had  taught  him  was  as  faithful  a  soul  as  any 
in  the  world.  He  summoned  his  habitual  tenderness  for 
her. 

"  My  poor  old  girl,"  he  said,  "  why  harrow  your  feelings 
in  this  way?  You  remind  me  of  a  person  who  has  a  hor- 
ror of  death  walking  into  the  Morgue  to  look  at  it." 

"  Are  you  wholly  without  pity,  Edmund  ?  Do  you  never 
forgive  ?  " 

"  We  have  lived  long  enough  together  for  you  to  answer 
that  question  for  yourself,"  said  Broke,  without  resent- 
ment. She  was  a  woman  and  a  mother,  after  all,  poor 
old  girl! 

"  It  begins  to  seem  almost,"  said  the  unhappy  woman, 
"  that  I  have  been  yoked  all  these  years  with  a  sort  of 
monster,  and  I  have  not  known  it.  The  first  I  could  hardly 
bear;  the  second  may  be  too  much." 

Broke  did  not  look  at  his  wife's  face.  Also  he  tried  not 
to  listen  to  her  words.  It  was  hardly  fair  to  her  to  lis- 
ten; he  had  a  very  chivalrous  heart.  For  she  spoke  no 
longer  as  the  cool  and  temperate  woman  of  affairs.  In 
such  a  speech  as  this  there  was  nothing  to  be  recognized 
of  the  mellow  candour,  the  amiable  cynicism,  the  slightly 
inhuman  wisdom  of  her  who  so  long  had  practised  the 
world's  doctrine  of  expedience.  Indeed,  had  he  been  in 
a  mood  for  laughter,  such  a  melodramatic  change  in  her 
must  have  caused  him  to  indulge  in  it. 

However,  let  others  laugh  at  that  spectacle.  As  a  woman 
and  a  mother  something  was  her  due.  And  as  a  man  and 
a  father  something  was  due  to  him  also.  He  bled  as  well 
as  she.  It  was  his  fate  to  be  denied  a  recognition  of  that 
fact,  but  such  was  the  supposed  austerity  of  the  male  sex, 
that  he  must  suffer  that  unfairness.  The  feminine  sense 
of  justice  is  known  to  be  imperfect.  The  pangs  of  ma- 
ternity may  be  great,  but  are  there  no  nerve-centres  in  the 
human  father?  Had  he  had  no  gaping  wounds  of  his  own 
there  might  have  been  a  better  hope  for  them  both.  That 
same  guarantee  of  a  lofty  disinterestedness  was  with  him 
here  in  the  case  of  his  daughter  as  in  that  of  his  son.    As 


FIRST  COMEDIAN  IN  A  HAPPY  VEIN     349 

it  was,  his  own  desperate  pangs  gave  him  strength.  From 
them  he  derived  the  power  to  sit  down  there  and  then 
and  write  a  letter  of  instruction  to  his  brother-in-law.  It 
embodied,  with  cruel  completeness,  the  decree  he  had  is- 
sued to  his  wife.  If  his  right  hand  offended  he  struck 
it  off. 

He  did  not  show  this  letter  to  Delia's  mother,  and  she 
did  not  ask  to  see  it.  Placing  it  in  the  pocket  of  his  coat, 
he  went  straight  to  the  stables,  procured  a  horse,  rode  to 
the  nearest  post  office,  and  posted  it  with  his  own  hands. 

As  he  performed  the  act,  a  hearty  round  of  applause  was 
bestowed  upon  him  from  all  parts  of  the  Olympian  Thea- 
tre. The  house  was  already  unanimous  in  opinion  that 
this  was  one  of  the  most  gifted  natural  comedians  who 
had  had  the  honour  to  tread  its  boards. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI 

ENTER    A    MESSENGER    FROM    THE    COURTS    OF    HYMEN 

IF  Broke's  ideal  was  loyalty,  his  instinct  at  the  period 
he  went  to  wive  must  have  been  very  sure  and  re- 
markable. The  writing  and  posting  of  the  letter  taxed 
that  quality  to  the  utmost  in  Mrs.  Broke.  It  was  a  chief 
glory  of  her  character,  an  instance  of  the  divine  patience 
of  her  sex,  that,  broken  and  shattered  as  she  already  was 
by  the  incident  of  her  son,  she  did  not  in  the  end  allow 
this  second  evidence  of  her  husband's  real  nature  to 
wrench  them  asunder. 

It  was  a  rather  heroic  devotion.  From  whatever  stand- 
point a  woman  may  take  her  outlook  on  life,  she  cannot 
suffer  the  children  of  her  heart  to  be  cast  away  without 
nursing  a  bitter  resentment  against  the  instrument  of  her 
woe,  even  if  it  happen  to  be  Almighty  God.  It  would  have 
been  fatally  easy  for  a  smaller  nature,  with  its  weakened 
resources,  to  break  away  from  Broke,  and  for  its  own 
solace  repudiate  those  drastic  acts  of  which  as  husband 
and  father  he  had  shown  himself  to  be  capable.  Her 
instincts  cried  out  to  her  to  denounce  and  put  off  the  in- 
human monster  who  had  trampled  her  maternity  under 
his  feet ;  her  force  of  will  kept  her  staunch.  The  qualities 
that  had  enabled  her  to  keep  the  sinking  ship  so  long 
afloat  came  now  to  her  aid  in  this,  the  most  instant  crisis 
of  her  life.  That  indomitable  resolution,  thrice  welded 
in  the  furnace  of  necessity,  rendered  her  strong,  when 
every  nerve  cried  out  that  loyalty  could  no  longer  be  ex- 
pected, no  longer  demanded  of  her. 

In  abiding  passively  by  this  second  decree  Mrs.  Broke 
saw,  as  in  the  case  of  the  first,  just  one  remote  gleam  of 
hope.  That  favourite  doctrine,  laissez-faire,  must  be  in- 
voked, in  the  hope  that  as  time  went  on  things  might  fol- 

350 


MESSENGER  FROM  COURTS  OF  HYMEN     351 

low  a  less  inexorable  trend.  If  Delia  re-entered  her  old 
school  for  a  year,  or  perhaps  two,  and  atoned  for  her 
misconduct  by  a  subsequent  exemplary  behaviour  that  had 
formerly  been  hers,  there  was  still  a  hope,  however  faint, 
that  time,  the  healer  of  all  wounds,  might  also  soften  the 
affront  to  her  father's  implacable  annoyance.  It  was  not 
yet  the  hour  to  despair  of  ever  getting  her  back  into  the 
fold.  Her  knowledge  of  Broke  told  her  how  far  off  this 
hope  was;  but  at  least  the  ukase  against  her  youngest 
daughter  could  not  be  quite  as  irrevocable  as  that  against 
their  only  son.  Delia  had  rebelled,  it  was  true,  but  as 
yet  she  could  not  be  said  to  have  done  anything  that  put 
her  for  ever  outside  the  pale. 

During  the  long  week  of  blood  and  tears  that  followed 
the  sending  of  the  letter,  the  unhappy  woman  was  in  the 
throes  of  conflict.  Morning,  afternoon,  and  evening,  and 
in  the  long  watches  of  the  night,  it  was  a  perpetual  strug- 
gle of  tooth  and  nail.  During  that  period  she  saw  at  least 
two  letters  lying  unopened  in  the  handwriting  of  her 
brother  addressed  to  her  husband.  Broke  did  not  show 
them  to  her,  nor  subsequently  did  he  allude  to  their  con- 
tents. Valiantly  she  strove  to  defeat  all  conjectures  con- 
cerning them,  and  by  sheer  force  of  will  nearly  succeeded 
in  so  doing. 

It  was  not  until  nearly  a  fortnight  had  passed  that  the 
matter  entered  a  new  phase.  Her  brother  came  unex- 
pectedly one  afternoon.  She  noted  at  once  that  his  man- 
ner was  rather  more  hangdog  and  querulous  than  usual. 
Something  appeared  to  be  weighing  on  his  mind.  He  had 
the  air  of  one  who,  having  been  commissioned  to  break 
bad  news,  is  so  oppressed  with  the  sense  of  his  responsi- 
bility that  he  adopts  a  demeanour  calculated  to  raise  ex- 
travagant fears. 

Presently,  after  recourse  to  two  whiskies  and  sodas, 
much  chewing  of  the  straw  in  his  mouth,  much  shiftiness 
and  irresolution.  Lord  Bosket  proposed  that  they  should 
go  to  another  room,  as  he  had  something  important  to 
tell  his  sister. 

Mrs.  Broke  took  him  to  her  sitting-room. 


352  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

■  "  I'm  glad  Edmund  is  not  about,"  said  her  brother,  with 
the  air  of  a  criminal.  "  I'm  not  quite  sure  how  he'll  take 
it,  do  you  see.  I  think  it  will  be  better  for  you  to  break 
it  to  him,  Jane.  You  understand  his  ways  more  and  know 
him  better  than  I  do."  * 

"  What  has  happened  ?  "  said  Mrs.  Broke,  already  op- 
pressed by  this  circumlocution. 

"  The  little  filly  was  married  this  mornin'." 

Mrs.  Broke  shuddered  a  little  and  laughed  a  little  in 
the  same  instant  of  time. 

"  What  do  you  mean,  Charles  ?     Explain,  please." 

"  She  was  married  this  mornin'  by  special  licence  to 
that  writin'  feller;  and  I've  just  seen  'em  off  to  Paris  for 
the  honeymoon.  From  Paris  they  are  goin'  to  the  Medi- 
terranean, and  then  on  to  Algiers." 

The  weary  bewilderment  in  the  face  of  Mrs.  Broke  in- 
creased rather  than  grew  less. 

"  The  world  moves  a  little  too  fast  for  one  just  now. 
One  is  out  of  breath  trying  to  keep  pace  with  it.  I — I 
confess  I  don't  quite  know  where  I  am." 

"  Of  course,  you  will  say  it  is  all  my  fault,"  said  Lord 
Bosket  gloomily.  "But  I  couldn't  hold  that  little  filly. 
She  took  her  head  right  away  from  the  start.  Twice  I 
wrote  to  Edmund  after  that  pretty  letter  he  sent  me  to 
tell  him  there  was  not  much  chance  of  my  bein'  able  to 
carry  out  his  instructions,  but  he  didn't  trouble  to  reply. 
Besides,  I  don't  mind  tellin'  you,  Jane,  that  I  didn't  mean 
to  carry  'em  out.  I  thought  that  letter  was  the  rottenest 
ever  written.  I  had  not  the  heart  to  show  it  to  the  poor 
little  gal." 

Mrs.  Broke  looked  at  her  brother  with  a  faint  tinge  of 
horror  in  her  face. 

"  Did  you  see  that  letter,  Jane  ?  " 

"  No,  Charles,  I  did  not ;  but  I  was  aware  of  the  con- 
tents." 

"  Oh,  you  were !  Well,  my  gal,  I  don't  think  I  should 
be  proud  of  it  if  I  were  you.  You  ought  to  be  ashamed 
of  yourselves,  both  of  you." 

Lord  Bosket  concluded  his  remarks  with  a  sudden  heat. 


MESSENGER  FROM  COURTS  OF  HYMEN     353 

"  I  don't  mind  tellin'  you,  Jane/'  he  added,  "  that  that 
letter  got  me  on  the  raw.  I  wonder  if  I  would  have  writ- 
ten a  letter  Hke  that  if  I  had  had  nice  little  fillies  of  my 
own." 

"  Don't,  Charles,  please,"  said  the  unhappy  woman,  with 
bowed  head.     "  There  was  great  provocation." 

"  Provocation,  be  damned.  Tell  her  to  come  back,  and 
promise  her  a  good  hidin'  when  she  does  come;  or  fetch 
her  yourself,  and  see  that  she  gets  one;  but  there  is  no 
need  to  tell  the  poor  little  gal  she  is  no  longer  your  daugh- 
ter. But  mind  you,  Jane,  I  don't  hold  you  responsible. 
I'll  lay  a  thousand  to  five  that  that  was  Edmund.  I've 
always  said  that  Edmund  can  be  an  awful  swine  when  he 
likes." 

"  We  were  very  much  upset,  Charles,  when  that  letter 
was  written,"  said  his  sister  weakly.  She  endeavoured, 
for  her  husband's  credit,  to  associate  herself  with  the  of- 
fending document.     She  did  not  succeed. 

"  Upset !  "  said  Lord  Bosket  contemptuously.  "  Upset  I 
But  don't  tell  me  that  you  had  a  hand  in  it.  You  could 
not  ha'  written  that  letter  more  than  I  could  myself. 
That  was  Edmund,  the  ugly  brute.  I  expect  he'll  be  a 
tearin'  lunatic  when  he  hears  about  this  mornin's  per- 
formance. But  mind  you,  Jane,  I  believe  it  is  for  the  best. 
The  thing  was  done  accordin'  to  Cocker,  mind  you.  I 
gave  the  little  filly  away  myself,  and  saw  'em  off  from 
Charing  Cross  afterwards.  And  they  are  not  goin'  to 
starve.  I  saw  that  young  feller  once  or  twice  in  the  pad- 
dock before  the  event,  and  everything  was  settled  ac- 
cordin' to  the  card." 

"  Am  I  to  take  it,  Charles,  that  you  helped  them  to  get 
married?"  said  his  sister  in  a  bewildered  tone. 

"  You  can  take  it,  my  gal,  just  as  you  please.  I  sup- 
pose there  will  be  another  *  Scene  in  the  House '  now  it's 
done,  but  if  I  was  to  say  I  was  sorry  I  should  not  be 
speaicin'  the  truth.  I  looked  at  the  matter  all  ways  on, 
and  finally  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  best  thing  I 
could  do  was  to  give  'em  a  leg  up.  Edmund  would  not 
have  the  poor  little  gal  back,  and  in  all  my  born  days  I 


354  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

have  not  seen  a  pair  cut  out  prettier  for  double  harness. 
Nice  pair — very.  And  if  I  know  anything  those  two 
young  devils  were  not  goin'  to  stand  nonsense  from  any- 
body. Once  they  were  together  I  don't  see  what  was 
goin'  to  hold  'em." 

''  There  was  the  law." 

"  So  there  was.  Funny  I  didn't  think  of  that.  But  it 
makes  no  odds.  You  and  Edmund  and  me  and  all  the 
judges  on  the  bench  would  not  ha'  held  'em  at  the  finish. 
They  were  a  pair  of  customers,  those  two.  From  the  time 
I  first  saw  our  little  tit  on  that  heap  of  stones,  it  was  a 
moral  that  once  she  had  started  there  would  be  no  gettin' 
her  back  to  the  post.  She  would  ha'  died  first.  I  have 
seen  some  rum  ones  in  my  time,  Jane,  but  never  one  to 
touch  her.  And  for  that  matter  I  might  as  well  tell  you 
that  Edmund  could  ha'  saved  himself  the  trouble  of  writin' 
that  letter.  It  was  a  thousand  to  five  that  his  litde  gal 
would  never  trouble  him  again.  I  thought  at  first,  don't 
you  know,  that  she  was  so  obstinate  because  she  was  done 
up;  but  the  next  mornin',  when  she  had  put  in  a  sound 
night's  rest  and  she  got  up  in  her  right  mind,  do  you  know 
what  she  said  ?     I  suppose  I  had  better  not  tell  you." 

"  I  should  prefer  to  know,  Charles." 

"  Well,  says  our  little  Miss  Broke,  *  God  may  forgive 
him,  but  I  never  will ! ' — ^meanin'  her  father.  It  was  said 
in  cold  blood,  mind  you.  Pretty  good,  that,  for  a  bit  of 
a  thing  not  out  of  her  teens,  and  not  much  bigger  than  a 
brown  mouse.  She  was  as  quiet  and  soft  about  it  as  you 
please ;  no  tears,  no  fuss.  Somehow,  Jane,  that  got  home 
on  me.     There's  a  bit  of  Edmund  himself  in  her." 

A  wan  look  had  come  into  the  face  of  Mrs.  Broke. 
There  was  no  need  for  her  brother  to  draw  that  analogy ; 
the  wife  and  mother  had  already  drawn  it  for  herself. 

"  Queen  Elizabeth,"  she  said,  trying  a  laugh. 

The  attempt,  however,  was  rather  ghastly,  and  merely 
served  to  emphasize  the  look  of  horror  in  her  eyes. 

"  I  suppose,  Charles,  we  ought  to  be  very  grateful  for 
all  you  have  done  for  this  wretched  child,"  said  his  sister, 
striving  to  put  on  her  armour  of  suave,  practical  matter- 


MESSENGER  FROM  COURTS  OF  HYMEN     355 

of-fact.  It  was  a  difficult  process,  but  the  valiant  woman 
got  it  on  somehow.  "  I  am  sure,  Charles,  you  have  acted 
for  the  best.  If  you  had  not  gone  after  her  so  promptly 
I  shudder  to  think  what  might  have  happened  to  a  penni- 
less and  distraught  creature  like  that,  alone  in  London." 

"  I  can  tell  you,"  said  her  brother,  with  grim  brevity. 
"  There  would  ha'  been  the  body  of  a  little  gal  to  identify 
— found  dead  on  a  doorstep  in  the  Charing  Cross  Road 
at  one  in  the  mornin'." 

"  I  must  ask  you  to  spare  my  feelings,  Charles,"  said 
his  sister,  shuddering  at  this  realism. 

"  You  didn't  spare  that  poor  little  gal's,  none  of  you," 
said  Lord  Bosket,  with  gloomy  indignation. 

"  I  should  have  come  to  relieve  you  of  the  charge  of  the 
child  immediately,  had  not  Edmund  proved  so  unreason- 
able. And  had  I  come  I  am  afraid  I  could  have  done  no 
good.  But  tell  me,  Charles,  this  man  Porter,  what  opin- 
ion did  you  form  of  him?  " 

"  I  have  already  given  you  my  opinion,  my  gal." 

"  Do  you  not  think  you  might  be  a  little  more  explicit 
in — in  the  light  of  what  has  happened  ?  " 

"  Well,  I  went  to  see  him  at  the  office  of  his  newspaper. 
I  daresay  you  will  be  interested  to  know  that  he  had  still 
got  a  mark  on  his  forehead  the  size  of  half  a  crown,  but 
that  he  had  had  his  front  teeth  put  in  again.  And  it 
didn't  take  long  for  me  to  grant  him  a  licence.  A  very 
straightforward,  honest,  unassuming  young  feller,  ready 
to  run  straight.  He  didn't  allude  to  that  little  occurrence, 
naturally;  but  somehow  he  had  not  the  air  of  a  man  who 
carries  a  grievance,  and  as  soon  as  I  saw  that  I  gave  him 
full  marks.  Give  me  the  feller  who  can  take  a  hidin' 
whether  he's  deserved  it  or  not.'* 

Mrs.  Broke  winced  a  little. 

"  And  it  struck  me,  Jane,  that  he  had  got  a  mind  of  his 
own  had  that  young  feller.  He  said  he  should  stand  by 
her  whatever  happened  now  that  she  had  come  to  him. 
He  said  he  had  no  wish  to  put  himself  in  the  wrong  in 
the  eye  of  the  law,  but  law  or  no  law  he  was  goin'  to 
marry  her.     I  must  say  I  liked  the  style  of  the  feller  alto- 


356  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

gether.  Nothin'  fussy,  nothin'  high-falutin',  but  straight 
and  plain  as  daylight.  He  gave  me  the  feelin'  that  things 
were  pannin'  out  better  than  we  could  have  hoped." 

"  Did  he  strike  you  as  a  gentleman,  Charles  ?  " 

"  Wish  I  was  as  good  a  one/'  said  my  lord  gloomily. 

"  I  mean,  Charles,  in  a  conventional  sense." 

"  He's  not  one  of  the  haw-haw  brigade,  if  that's  what 
you  mean.  And  I've  seen  bosses  cut  prettier  in  the  jib. 
But  he's  one  to  be  reckoned  with  in  any  company.  I  don't 
remember  to  have  met  one  so  thorough.  I'd  ha'  trusted 
him  with  one  of  my  own.  And,  mind  you,  I  went  to  him 
right  up  to  the  muzzle  in  prejudice." 

"  I  suppose  you  know  he  is  the  son  of  a  Cuttisham  book- 
seller?" 

"  Very  creditable  to  the  booksellers  of  Cuttisham,  if  that 
is  so.  If  they  can  produce  that  sort  they  are  a  fine  body 
o'  men." 

"  But,  my  dear  Charles " 

"  There's  no  *  buts '  about  it.  Let  every  tub  stand  on 
its  own  bottom.  When  you  meet  a  damn  fool,  give  him 
the  order  of  the  boot ;  when  you  meet  a  wise  man  you  can 
kindly  raise  your  beaver.  And  I'll  lay  a  monkey  to  noth- 
ing you'll  want  a  new  toe-cap  before  you've  worn  out  the 
brim  of  your  Lincoln  and  Bennett.  If  I  felt  myself  to 
be  the  equal  of  that  young  feller  I  should  carry  my  head 
a  bit  higher  than  I  do  at  present,  I  don't  mind  tellin' 
you." 

"  One  is  a  little  astonished  by  the  idealist  picture  you 
paint,  my  dear  Charles." 

"  No  need  to  be,  my  gal.  I've  seen  him  not  once  or 
twice,  mind  you,  but  a  dozen  times.  I  ought  to  be  a  bit 
of  a  judge  of  a  boss,  but  I  never  ran  over  the  points  of 
one  that  had  got  to  carry  my  racin'  colours  like  I  did  his. 
You  don't  think,  Jane,  do  you,  that  I  should  ha'  handed 
our  little  gal  to  a  feller  that  I  wouldn't  back  to  my  last 
*  lord  o'  the  manor '  ?  " 

"  I  do  not,  Charles.     I  do  you  that  justice." 

"  Very  good  of  you,  I'm  sure.     And,  in  my  opinion. 


MESSENGER  FROM  COURTS  OF  HYMEN     357 

they  will  be  about  the  best  mated  pair  in  England.  They 
are  made  for  one  another,  you  might  say,  like  a  cup  and 
saucer.  That  little  filly  of  ours  wants  a  man  of  that  sort 
or  none.  A  common  feller,  with  no  mind  and  no  charac- 
ter, would  not  do  for  her." 

"  And  he  can  afford  to  keep  her,  Charles  ?  " 

"  He  has  twelve  hundred  a  year  of  his  own,  roughly 
speaking  and  I  hear  he  is  a  risin'  man.  His  chief  tells  me 
he  is  goin'  far.  In  the  meantime  I  have  settled  another 
five  hundred  a  year  on  the  little  filly  myself,  just  to  keep 
'em  from  starving.  I  knew  Edmund  couldn't,  and  if  he 
could  he  wouldn't." 

Mrs.  Broke  was  touched  by  this  concrete  example  of 
her  brother's  goodness  of  heart. 

"  I  don't  know  how  we  can  thank  you,  Charles,  for  all 
you  have  done,"  she  said  humbly.  "  You  have  always  been 
the  truest  friend  we  have  had.  There  seems  no  end  to 
your  kindnesses." 

"  That's  all  right,"  said  her  brother,  with  a  slight  display 
of  uneasiness,  "  no  need  to  go  into  trifles.  It  is  no  more 
than  anybody  else  would  ha'  done  in  the  circumstances. 
They  might  ha'  stopped  short  of  the  ceremony,  I  daresay 
they  would ;  but  let  people  say  what  they  like,  I  am  con- 
vinced it  will  turn  out  sound." 

Lord  Bosket  rose  to  go.  As  he  was  leaving  the  house 
he  met  Broke,  who  was  coming  across  the  hall.  Their 
usual  informal  greetings  were  exchanged.  It  then  struck 
Lord  Bosket  with  surprise  that  his  brother-in-law  re- 
frained from  alluding  to  the  subject  which  had  dominated 
his  own  thoughts  for  a  fortnight  past.  So  great  was  his 
relief  at  thus  providentially  finding  himself  in  a  position 
to  avoid  this  topic,  that,  on  his  own  part,  he  studiously 
refrained  from  making  a  reference  to  it.  All  the  same,  it 
was  very  strange  that  Edmund  should  not  speak  of  it  in 
any  way.  However,  as  Lord  Bosket  proceeded  to  pass 
out  at  the  door,  he  turned  back  to  say  over  his  shoulder : 

"  By  the  way,  Edmund,  you  had  better  go  and  have  a 
word  with  Jane.     She's  got  something  to  tell  you." 


358  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

Delia's  cunning  uncle  then  disappeared  through  the  door 
hastily,  lest  her  father  should  recall  him  to  explain  what 
the  something  was. 

Broke  did  not  go  to  his  wife  at  once.  He  had  no  doubt 
the  matter  could  wait  until  he  had  laid  his  mind  at  rest 
on  a  point  in  regard  to  turnips  which  he  wanted  to  look 
up  in  a  back  number  of  the  Field.  Having  convinced 
himself  after  researches  lasting  nearly  an  hour  that  the 
Field  said  just  what  he  thought  it  did  say,  he  went  to  talk 
with  his  wife. 

He  was  rather  surprised  by  the  amount  of  emotion  that 
was  reflected  in  her  face.  It  would  have  been  hard  to  find 
an  obtuser  person  than  he,  but  the  change  that  had  been 
taking  place  in  her  recently  could  not  escape  even  his  per- 
functory eyes. 

"  Charles  said  you  wished  to  speak  to  me." 

"  I  wanted  to  tell  you  that  Delia  married  that  man  this 
morning." 

The  announcement  was  made  without  any  sort  of  pref- 
ace. 

It  was  received  with  blank  indifference. 

Mrs.  Broke  could  hardly  conceal  her  surprise.  She 
had  looked  for  a  repetition,  in  some  sort  at  least,  of  the 
scene  that  followed  a  similar  announcement  in  the  case 
of  Billy.  But  Broke  paid  no  more  heed  than  if  he  had  not 
heard  a  word.  Her  immediate  feeling  was  one  of  relief, 
although  even  as  she  experienced  it  there  was  a  sense  that 
his  attitude  was  a  little  uncanny. 

"  I  hope,  Edmund,"  she  said  nervously,  "  that  you  view 
the  matter  in  the  light  I  do  myself.  I  believe  it  to  be 
rather  providential.  The  child  has  made  a  hopeless  mess 
of  her  life,  but  I  am  by  no  means  sure  that  things  have 
not  turned  out  as  well  as  could  have  been  expected. 
Charles  quite  thinks  so.  Indeed,  he  has  helped  rather 
actively  to  bring  it  about.  The  man  has  earned  his  entire 
confidence,  and,  I  think,  Edmund,  we  must  allow,  that 
Charles,  with  all  his  foibles,  is  a  shrewd  judge  of  character. 
Charles  has  behaved  most  handsomely.  He  has  settled 
five  hundred  a  year  on  the  child  herself  and  the  man,  I 


MESSENGER  FROM  COURTS  OF  HYMEN     359 

understand,  has  twelve  hundred  a  year  of  his  own  and 
excellent  prospects." 

But  deliberately  Broke  was  not  hearing  a  word.  He 
suppressed  a  yawn  with  his  hand.  Mrs.  Broke's  sense  of 
relief  having  passed,  she  was  now  afflicted  severely  by  such 
an  attitude.     She  would  almost  have  preferred  a  scene. 

"  I  hope  you  realize,  Edmund,  how  vital  all  this  is  to 
the  welfare  of  the  child?  " 

"  On  the  contrary,  the — ah — matter  does  not  interest 
me.  It  was  closed  a  fortnight  ago,  and  in  any  circum- 
stances it  cannot  be  reopened." 

"  But,  Edmund " 

He  cut  her  short  with  his  hand. 

"  I  shall  be  glad,  Jane,  when  you  bring  yourself  to  real- 
ize that  this  is  the  case.  It  is  a  waste  of  time  to  attempt 
to  reopen  a  subject  that  is  closed  once  and  for  all." 

"But,  Edmund !" 

"  Is  this  all  you  wish  to  speak  to  me  about  ?  " 

"  It  is,"  said  his  wife.     She  was  cut  to  the  heart. 

Broke  left  the  room  in  the  leisurely  manner  in  which 
he  had  entered  it. 


CHAPTER  XXXVII 

THE   LADY   BOSKET   AT    HOME 

ON  leaving  his  sister,  Lord  Bosket  went  to  his  own 
home,  some  five  miles  from  Covenden.  He  had  been 
absent  a  fortnight;  and  on  leaving  London  that  morning 
he  had  gone  direct  to  the  distressed  family  of  Covenden. 
The  man  and  the  clothes  he  had  telegraphed  for  after  his 
unpremeditated  visit  to  town  had  been  sent  on  in  advance. 
As  soon  as  he  arrived  at  Hipsley  that  afternoon  the  butler 
greeted  him. 

''  Her  ladyship  told  me  to  say,  my  lord,  that  she  wished 
to  see  you  particularly  the  moment  you  returned.  She  is 
in  her  study,  my  lord." 

In  the  impassive  person  who  made  this  announcement, 
Lord  Bosket's  grunt  did  not  cause  an  inch  of  eyebrow  to 
be  displaced.  Nor  did  the  long-drawn  whistle  produce  a 
visible  emotion  in  that  implicit  breast. 

"How's  her  plumage,  Paling?" 

"  Standing  up,  my  lord." 

"  You  had  better  get  me  a  whisky  and  soda,  then,  before 
I  go  and  face  the  music." 

Reinforced  by  this  elixir.  Lord  Bosket  betook  himself 
presently  to  the  study  of  the  gifted  lady.  She  was  dis- 
covered seated  at  an  Empire  writing-table,  writing  copi- 
ously on  blue  foolscap  with  a  feathered  quill.  At  a  side- 
table,  a  sort  of  annexe  to  the  Mount  Parnassus  where  sat 
the  child  of  the  gods,  the  daughter  of  the  Muses,  was 
seated  a  second  lady,  severe  of  years,  of  aspect  also,  the 
secretary  of  the  distinguished  authoress.  At  the  moment 
she  was  fingering  a  typewriter,  assiduously  clucking  out 
into  a  fair  copy  the  pellucid  lines  of  Love  Eclectic;  a  Son- 
net Cycle,  immediately  antecedent  to  its  being  given  to  the 

360 


THE  LADY  BOSKET  AT  HOME  361 

peoples  of  the  earth  in  nine  monthly  magazines,  and  count- 
less baser  newspapers ;  afterwards  to  be  born  again,  like 
a  second  Peleus,  in  the  buckram  and  large  paper  of  the 
higher  grove  of  the  birds  of  song. 

The  utterer  of  these  winged  words,  whose  destiny  it 
was  to  cleave  the  air  of  our  time  with  fragrance,  having 
concluded  this  important  contribution  to  the  heritage  of 
man,  was  now  engaged  upon  a  short  essay,  yclept  "  An 
Inquiry  into  the  Decay  of  Feeling."  Its  avowed  purpose 
was  to  keep  a  light  burning  in  these  dark  days  of  Brutality 
and  Mammon.  The  ideal  it  set  before  itself  was  to  min- 
gle the  culture  of  Old  Greece  with  the  humane  simplicity 
of  the  New  Testament.  The  syndicate  which  had  pur- 
chased the  serial  rights  before  a  line  had  been  written  had 
already  paid  a  substantial  cheque  on  account. 

Beside  the  elbow  of  the  gifted  lady  was  a  feminine 
periodical  written  exclusively  by  Peeresses  for  the  perusal 
of  Ladies  who  had  been  presented  at  Court,  and  Gentle- 
women of  the  Upper  Middle  Class.  On  the  cover  was  the 
picture  of  a  Crowned  Head  in  Colours.  The  Crown  had 
been  reproduced  with  a  fidelity  never  attempted  before. 
By  a  triumph  of  lithography  every  stone  in  it  received 
its  value,  and  shone  with  the  greatest  authenticity.  A 
copy  of  the  magazine  had  been  graciously  accepted  by  the 
Crowned  Head  in  question.  And  so  lavish  were  its  pro- 
prietors in  the  lures  with  which  they  ravished  the  eyes  of 
the  public,  that,  as  if  this  fact  was  not  in  itself  enough  to 
exhaust  the  first  edition  on  the  day  of  publication,  there 
was  displayed  on  the  top  of  the  cover,  in  a  type  suffi- 
ciently bold  to  cause  the  hesitating  purchaser  at  once  to 
resolve  her  doubts,  the  legend  "  The  Lady  Bosket  at  Home, 
by  One  who  Knows  Her,  page  340." 

A  reference  to  the  page  in  question  set  forth,  under  the 
general  title  of  "  Illustrated  Interview  No.  12,"  many  de- 
tails of  the  home  life  of  the  author  of  Poses  in  the  Opaque. 
Not  only  was  she  the  first  poetess  and  authoress  of  her 
time  from  the  point  of  view  of  an  unimpeachable  distinc- 
tion, but  it  was  also  her  privilege  to  sit  in  the  gallery  of 
the  Upper  House.     To  be  sure  there  had  been  others,  but 


362  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

incredible  as  it  might  appear,  even  wearers  of  the  straw- 
berry leaf  were  not  endowed  so  unmistakably  with  the 
authentic  thrill  as  Lady  Bosket.  The  husband  of  the 
gifted  lady,  said  the  enthusiastic  periodical,  was  also  a 
gentleman  of  exemplary  life  and  highest  culture,  widely 
known  and  deeply  respected,  a  generous  patron  of  the 
Turf,  a  member  of  the  Jockey  Club,  and  a  popular  and 
accomplished  Master  of  Hounds. 

It  appeared  that  in  the  singularly  beautiful  home  life 
of  this  great  and  good  lady  her  humility  was  in  a  nice 
proportion  to  her  gifts.  Her  tastes  were  as  simple  as  they 
were  refined.  She  had  a  predilection  for  blue  china,  and 
black  letter,  white  muslin,  and  green  tea.  It  was  a  popu- 
lar fallacy  to  suppose  that  that  exquisite  utterance,  "  Home 
is  the  woman's  sphere,"  was  out  of  the  Poses,  in  the  same 
way  that  it  was  to  suppose  that  "  God  tempers  the  wind 
to  the  shorn  lamb"  was  out  of  the  Bible;  but  it  belonged 
to  her  in  a  higher  and  more  special  sense,  because  of  the 
serene  and  unfailing  manner  in  which  she  sustained  the 
domestic  character.  She  had  made  it  her  own.  It  was 
the  very  wellspring  of  her  writings.  It  was  the  sacred 
fount,  whence  gushed  the  pure  solace  of  many  a  humble 
hearth. 

As  befitted  the  transcendent  genius  of  one  "  who  had 
become  a  classic  in  her  own  lifetime  " — in  the  words  of 
one  of  the  journals  whose  privilege  it  was  to  extol  her 
works — the  definitive  edition  of  the  collected  writings  of 
Lady  Bosket,  the  Hipsley  edition  of  the  publishers'  an- 
nouncement, stood  on  the  side  table  in  twelve  majestic 
tomes.  On  the  virgin  front  of  each  was  stamped  a  mono- 
gram and  crest.  Within  was  a  full-length  photogravure 
of  the  gifted  lady,  in  a  coronet  and  ermine.  Each  volume 
was  further  equipped  with  an  introduction  from  the  pen 
of  a  purveyor  of  prefaces  to  the  classic  authors. 

Lady  Bosket  had  exchanged  the  glasses  of  public  life 
for  the  gold  pince-nez  of  the  study.  Upon  the  appear- 
ance of  her  lord  she  resolutely  rounded  the  period  on 
which  she  was  engaged,  and  then  turned  majestically  in 
her  chair  to  confront  him. 


THE  LADY  BOSKET  AT  HOME  363 

"  Be  so  good  as  to  leave  us,  Miss  Mottrom,"  she  said  in 
her  most  imperious  key. 

The  thirteenth  daughter  of  a  rural  dean  who  had  been 
manipulating  the  typewriter  carried  the  machine  and  Love 
Eclectic:  a  Sonnet  Cycle  into  another  room.  When  Lord 
Bosket  had  closed  the  door,  Lady  Bosket  glared  upon  him 
stonily  through  her  pince-nez.  Less  accustomed  to  their 
use  on  active  service,  she  then  discarded  them  in  favour  of 
the  more  familiar  weapon. 

"  So  you  have  condescended  to  come !  " 

"  Oh,  yes."  Her  spouse  affected  a  meek  but  somewhat 
uneasy  lightness  of  tone. 

"  Have  you  any  objection  to  telling  me  where  you  have 
been  during  the  past  fortnight?" 

"  Town." 

"  That  is  a  lie,  Charles." 

The  delicately  cut  nostril  quivered.  The  whirr  of  in- 
tellectual feathers  could  be  faintly  heard. 

"  Beg  pardon,"  said  Lord  Bosket  humbly. 

The  uncompromising  statement  was  repeated. 

"  I  knew  you'd  say  that,"  he  said,  more  humbly  than 
ever.     "  But  it's  God's  truth." 

"  I  say  it  is  a  falsehood.  You  have  not  slept  once  at 
Grosvenor  Street  during  the  last  fortnight." 

"  No,  I  have  been  stayin'  at  an  hotel." 

"  You  have  the  effrontery  to  tell  me  that  to  my  face ! 
What  do  you  mean  by  staying  at  an  hotel  when  there  is 
your  own  house  to  go  to  ?  There  is  only  one  construction 
to  be  placed  upon  such  an  act ;  and,  Charles,  knowing  you 
as  I  do,  I  do  not  hesitate  to  place  it  upon  it." 

Before  such  splendid  scorn  her  lord  was  dumb.  The 
silvered  hair  shook  about  the  intellectual  temples.  The 
high  voice  rose  higher,  to  a  wail  "  like  the  zephyrs  of 
March  among  the  groves  of  the  forest"  {Love  Eclectic, 
XIX). 

"  Wholly  debased  and  abandoned  as  you  are,"  said  Lady 
Bosket,  stimulated  to  superior  flights  by  the  meekness  of 
this  wretched  groveller,  "  such  a  behaviour  can  have  no 
bearing  upon  your  reputation  or  your  character.     But  with 


364  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

me,  I  thank  Heaven  this  is  not  the  case.  I  must  be  watch- 
ful, Charles,  that  my  name  shall  not  be  tarnished  by  the 
breath  of  suspicion.  Do  you  suppose  that  the  work  to 
which  I  have  dedicated  my  life :  the  leavening  of  the  lives 
of  others — do  you  suppose,  Charles,  that  such  an  aim  as 
this  is  to  be  rendered  nugatory  by  the  irresponsible  acts 
of  the  coarse  ruffian  who  bears  my  name?  " 

Lord  Bosket,  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  whistled 
softly  to  himself  throughout  the  whole  of  this  oration. 

"  You  are  wrong  for  once,"  he  said  dismally,  when  the 
gifted  lady  had  rounded  her  last  period. 

The  cringing  posture  of  this  worm  among  mankind  im- 
bued the  poetess  with  a  more  heroic  fury. 

"  Well,  Charles,  it  may  interest  you  to  know  that  when 
you  were  last  from  home,  you  were  traced  by  a  private 
detective  to  the  house  of  an  actress  in  St.  John's  Wood." 

"  I  only  went  to  take  her  a  bunch  of  roses,  and  drink  a 
cup  of  tea.     No  harm  in  that." 

**  Man,  do  not  have  the  effrontery  to  defend -yourself. 
Your  very  existence  is  an  offence.  The  only  excuse  one 
has  had  for  tolerating  it  so  long  has  been  the  slender  hope 
that  force  of  example  would  bring  about  your  reform. 
But  I  lose  heart,  Charles.  A  very  little  more,  and  cost 
what  it  may  to  wash  dirty  linen  in  public,  I  shall  obtain 
peace  of  mind  at  the  price  of  self-respect  and  proceed  to 
do  so." 

"  How  much  more?  "  The  eagerness  of  my  lord  was  a 
little  pathetic. 

"  Pray  do  not  flatter  yourself  unduly."  The  tender, 
pious  hope  was  nipped  in  the  bud  already.  "  I  do  not 
propose  as  yet  to  abandon  you  to  the  mire.  But  this,  how- 
ever, is  not  the  matter  I  wish  to  discuss.  Charles,  I  must 
ask  you  to  be  good  enough  to  read  this.  Had  I  not  been 
so  busy  with  my  work  I  should  have  felt  it  to  be  my  duty 
to  see  Jane  and  Edmund  personally." 

As  she  spoke  Lady  Bosket  picked  up  The  Times  news- 
paper, reclining  cheek-by- jowl  with  the  Hipsley  edition 
of  her  works.  She  indicated  an  announcement  of  mar- 
riage on  the  front  page  for  Lord  Bosket's  perusal.     He 


THE  LADY  BOSKET  AT  HOME  365 

read:  "  Porter— Broke.  On  the  i6th  inst.,  at  St.  Re- 
migius',  South  Kensington,  by  the  Rev.  Canon  J.  G. 
Pryse-Johnson,  m.a.,  Vicar,  Alfred,  eldest  son  of  Joseph 
Porter,  Cuttisham  Parks,  to  Delia  Mary,  youngest  daugh- 
ter of  E.  W.  A.  C.  B.  Broke,  Esq.,  j.p.,  d.l.,  3  Broke 
Street,  St.  James's,  S.W. ;  and  Covenden,  Cuttisham, 
Parks." 

Lady  Bosket  watched  grimly  the  face  of  her  husband 
while  he  read  this  literary  achievement  with  something  of 
the  emotion  of  an  author  who  for  the  first  time  sees  his 
work  in  the  fierce  glamour  of  print. 

"  It  is  impossible,"  she  said ;  "  it  cannot  be  true,  and  yet 
it  is  alarmingly  circumstantial.  And  The  Times  is  so  cor- 
rect as  a  rule.  If  any  one  has  put  a  vulgar  hoax  upon  it 
I  hope  it  will  bring  the  perpetrator  to  justice." 

"  It  don't  look  so  bad  in  print  after  all,"  said  the  author. 
"  The  Vicar  and  I  fixed  up  that  little  account  ourselves, 
and  it  will  be  in  all  the  London  papers  this  mornin'.  The 
Vicar  wanted  to  put  in  niece  of  you  and  me,  but  I  said  no. 
It  would  not  be  fair  to  the  little  gal  to  have  her  handi- 
capped like  that.  But  still  that  little  account  don't  look 
so  bad.  And  I  see  they  have  spelt  the  *  Pryse  *  right. 
The  Vicar  was  afraid  they  might  spell  it  '  P-r-i-c-e.' " 

At  this  point  the  joint  author  was  stayed  imperiously 
by  the  high  priestess  of  his  craft. 

"Stop,  Charles!  What  talk  is  this!  Really,  I  am 
afraid  you  are  not  sober." 

"  Sober  as  a  judge,"  said  Lord  Bosket  earnestly.  "  I 
know  what  I'm  sayin'.  I  thought  it  best  to  do  the  thing 
accordin'  to  Cocker,  or  not  at  all.  Now  honour  bright, 
missis,  as  a  judge  of  literature,  don't  you  think  that  that 
little  account  looks  very  well  in  print  ?  " 

"  If  you  are  not  drunk,  Charles,  you  must  be  mad. 
Will  you  have  the  goodness  to  explain  the  meaning  of  it 
all?" 

Lord  Bosket  was  not  permitted  to  proceed  very  far  in 
his  remarkable  but  not  particularly  lucid  statement,  before 
he  was  stopped  again. 

"  Will  you  have  the  goodness  to  employ  as  little  licence 


366  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

in  your  speech  as  possible?  As  I  have  so  often  had  occa- 
sion to  remind  you,  the  word  '  filly '  is  intended  to  signify 
a  young  female  horse,  not  a  young  female  human  being." 

Lord  Bosket  continued  as  best  he  could  under  this  Jiam- 
pering  restriction.  Long  before  the  end  of  his  narrative 
Lady  Bosket  was  far  too  bewildered  to  be  able  to  impose 
any  further  checks  upon  it. 

"  It  is  too  much,"  she  cried.  "  One's  reason  staggers ! 
What  was  everybody  about?  What  were  her  parents 
about  ?  And  you,  Charles  ?  And  the  child  herself  ?  And 
the  police,  what  were  they  doing  ?  The  man  must  be  mad. 
You  all  must  be  mad !     No ;  I  will  not,  I  cannot  believe  it." 

Lady  Bosket  ended  on  a  sob  of  angry  pain,  which  gave 
her  so  much  pleasure  that  it  might  have  been  real.  Lord 
Bosket,  one  of  the  tenderest-hearted  men  in  the  world — 
at  least  those  who  knew  him  best  were  firm  in  that  belief — 
was  touched  by  such  a  poignant  distress.  He  had  the 
intrepidity  to  seek  to  lessen  it. 

"  No  need  to  take  on  about  it,  missis.  It's  all  for  the 
best,  I'm  certain.  Edmund  said  he  wouldn't  have  her 
back;  and  she  said  she  wouldn't  go  back,  and  meant  it, 
too.  Fact  is,  she  might  ha'  gone  much  farther  and  fared 
much  worse.  Lucky  little  filly  to  get  a  feller  like  that; 
though,  mind  you,  he's  lucky  too.     She's  a  fine  little  gal." 

"  Charles,  have  you  the  effrontery  to  stand  there  and 
defend  your  conduct  ?  " 

"  I  am  not  ashamed  of  it,"  said  Lord  Bosket  in  his 
meek  voice.  "  I  am  damned  if  I  am.  If  the  same  thing 
happened  to-morrow  I'd  do  it  again." 

"  Can  you  be  aware  that  this  man  is  from  behind  the 
counter  of  a  bookseller's  shop  in  Cuttisham?" 

"  Devilish  lucky  counter  to  keep  a  man  like  that  behind 
it,  as  I  said  to  Jane."  For  the  first  time  in  this  interview 
Lord  Bosket  showed  a  spark  of  spirit.  Attacks  on  his 
personal  character  he  had  formed  the  habit  of  accepting 
as  a  matter  of  course,  they  were  in  accordance  with  his 
merit;  but  in  the  cause  of  others  he  could  be  valiant. 
"  Missis,  what  I  say  is  this,  if  they  have  got  any  more  of 
that  sort  hidin'  behind  the  counters  in  the  Cuttisham  shops 


THE  LADY  BOSKET  AT  HOME  367 

the  sooner  they  come  from  behind  them  the  better  for  the 
nation.  I'd  back  that  young  feller  to  any  amount.  If  I'd 
got  a  little  filly  of  my  own,  I'd  be  proud  for  that  young 
feller  to  marry  her." 

"  Man,  you  forget  yourself." 

"  Wish  I  could,"  said  the  man  drearily. 

"  You  not  only  countenance  this  immoral  marriage,  you 
defend  it.  Have  you  no  sense  of  decency?  Have  you 
no  fragment  of  self-respect?  Answer  me,  man.  Were 
you  drunk  when  you  did  it  ?  " 

"  No,"  said  the  man  quietly. 

*'  I  suppose  there  is  a  law  in  the  land  by  which  this  im- 
moral marriage  can  be  set  aside.  What  are  Jane  and  Ed- 
mund doing  ?     Have  they  communicated  with  the  police  ?  " 

"  No ;  but  they  damn  near  had  to.  If  I  hadn't  hap- 
pened to  meet  old  Pearce  that  afternoon,  they'd  ha'  been 
wanted  at  the  mortuary  to  identify  the  body  of  a  little 
gal." 

"  What  is  Edmund  doing?  " 

"  If  you  had  read  the  letter  he  wrote  to  me  when  she 
went  away,  you  wouldn't  inquire.  He  disowned  her  at  the 
start.  He  behaved  like  the  swine  that  he  can  be,  did  Ed- 
mund, I  don't  mind  tellin'  you." 

"  A  very  right  and  proper  course  for  Edmund  to  take." 

Lord  Bosket  gave  his  shoulders  a  whimsical  shrug. 

"  The  man  Porter  must  be  lost  to  all  sense  of  shame. 
As  for  that  child,  she  is  so  abandoned  that  one  hardly 
cares  to  put  into  words  one's  feelings  about  her.  It  is 
intolerable  that  one  of  her  years  should  involve  her  family 
and  herself  in  such  degradation." 

At  this  point  Lord  Bosket  found  the  temerity  to  shake 
his  head  in  dissent. 

"  Here,  steady  on,  missis,"  he  interjected  suddenly. 

In  an  instant  was  he  turned  upon  and  rent. 

"  You  deny  me  the  right  to  express  my  opinion,  Charles," 
cried  the  gifted  lady,  "  like  the  wind  in  the  gables  groan- 
ing" {Love  Eclectic,  XXXV).  "But  I  will  express  it. 
Do  you  suppose  I  will  be  brow-beaten  by  a  coarse  bully? 
The  child  is  my  niece — would  that  she  were  not — and  what- 


368  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

ever  I  choose  to  think  of  her  I  will  say.  One  might  have 
known  that  the  moment  she  fell  into  your  clutches  she 
would  be  ruined." 

"  Steady  on,"  said  Lord  Bosket. 

An  odd  look  had  come  in  him  suddenly. 

"  Do  you  ask  me,  Charles,  to  condone  such  shameless 
and  abandoned  conduct  ?  " 

"  Steady  on,  missis,"  said  her  lord.  "  Stick  to  me ;  my 
back's  broad ;  and  I  daresay  I  deserve  all  I  get.  But  leave 
that  little  gal  alone,  do  you  hear.  Nobody's  goin'  to  say  a 
word  against  that  little  filly  before  me." 

"  Oh,  indeed,  Charles.  I  shall  say  exactly  what  I 
choose  of  the  little  filly,  as  you  term  her  so  elegantly." 
The  sagacious  lady  saw  where  the  shoe  pinched.  She 
wanted  to  inflict  pain ;  and  in  the  pleasure  of  the  discovery 
of  the  vulnerable  heel  of  this  besotted  Achilles,  against 
whom  her  shafts  were  directed  in  vain  as  a  rule,  she  was 
inclined  to  exult. 

In  the  meantime  the  uneasiness  of  Lord  Bosket's  man- 
ner had  become  more  visible.  His  dogged,  querulous  look 
was  giving  way  to  something  else ;  his  face  approximated 
a  shade  nearer  to  the  colour  of  the  tomato,  if  such  a  feat 
in  sestheticism  was  possible.  Something  almost  sinister 
was  showing  in  his  furtive  and  uneasy  eye.  He  began  to 
waddle  up  and  down  the  carpet,  a  course  to  which  the 
keenest  of  his  lady's  barbs  had  failed  to  incite  him  hitherto. 
Nor  was  Lady  Bosket  slow  to  observe  this  salutary  effect 
upon  her  sot  of  a  husband.  It  induced  her  to  spread  her 
pinions  wider.     She  went  to  higher  flights. 

Suddenly  Lord  Bosket  stopped  in  his  eccentric  waddle, 
and  bent  his  head  towards  her  with  a  humble,  perplexed 
expression. 

"  What  was  that  you  said,  missis  ?  I  didn't  quite  catch 
it." 

The  phrase  was  repeated,  syllable  by  syllable,  with  blus- 
tering unction. 

There  was  a  pause  while  Lord  Bosket  strove  to  instil 
its  meaning  into  his  torpid  wits.  He  then  appeared  to 
make  a  great  effort  to  pull  himself  together.     Exhibiting 


THE  LADY  BOSKET  AT  HOME  369 

many  tokens  of  mental  conflict,  he  made  a  careful  choice 
of  his  words,  and  proceeded  to  utter  them  with  a  precision 
that  few  would  have  given  him  the  credit  of  being  able 
to  use. 

"  Look  here,  my  good  woman,"  he  said,  and  his  face 
and  fingers  began  to  twitch  violently.  "  Neither  you  nor 
anybody  else  are  going  to  speak  of  that  little  gal  like  that 
before  me.     I  am  not  goin'  to  stand  it,  d'you  see." 

"  So  you  choose  to  be  impertinent,  Charles,"  said  the 
intrepid  lady,  not  scenting  the  danger  that  she  ran.  "  This 
is  a  new  development.  You  coarse  bully  and  ruffian,  I 
shall  speak  of  her  in  what  terms  I  choose." 

"  Oh,  you  will ! "  said  my  lord  in  a  gloomy  and  pensive 
manner.  "  Now,  missis,  look  you  here,  if  you  ain't  civil 
I  shall  have  to  smack  you." 

The  gifted  lady  paused  to  gasp  for  breath.  And  well 
she  might.  Such  a  speech  had  frozen  the  blood  in  those 
patrician  veins.  The  degraded  thing  she  called  husband 
was  here  in  a  new  role  indeed.  Never  before  had  she 
seen  him  look  thus.  And  as  for  hearing  him  speak  in 
that  way,  never,  never  had  those  chaste  ears  been  so  defiled. 
The  man  must  be  drinking  himself  mad.  The  flaccid, 
meek  thing,  whose  name  she  had  borne  all  these  years,  on 
whose  devoted  head  she  had  been  able  to  wreak  her  wrath 
to  her  heart'-s  content,  because  of  the  immunity  conferred 
by  his  sheeplike  nature,  had,  for  the  first  time,  given  place 
to  the  more  hideous  guise  in  which  her  romantic  fancy 
had  delighted  to  clothe  him  for  the  sake  of  a  histrionic 
verisimilitude. 

Often  enough  she  had  called  him  a  wolf  when  in  her 
heart  she  had  known  him  to  be  only  a  lamb.  Had  there 
seemed  even  a  remote  chance  of  being  torn  by  such  a  ter- 
rible animal,  nothing  would  have  induced  her  to  run  the 
risk.  No  sooner  was  it  borne  in  upon  the  gifted  lady 
that  the  brute  meant  what  he  said  than  her  flag  went 
down. 

It  was  only  for  an  instant,  however,  in  the  first  shock 
of  disillusion.  Habit  is  as  powerful  as  nature.  So  long 
had  she  been  accustomed  to  wield  the  rod  of  an  unques- 


370  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

tioned  ascendancy  over  him,  that  to  acquiesce  at  once  in 
this  new  order  of  things  was  impossible.  The  wretch 
might  bluster;  but  it  was  not  reasonable  to  suppose  that 
after  all  these  years  he  could  show  himself  as  anything 
more  fierce  than  she  so  well  knew  him  to  be.  This  was 
certainly  no  wolf,  however  he  might  bark  and  growl  and 
masquerade  in  grey  fur.  She  would  soon  tear  away  that 
inane  disguise  and  expose  the  childish  deception.  It  was 
only  Charles. 

With  the  accession  of  this  second  and  more  comfortable 
thought,  the  gifted  lady  raised  her  glasses  slowly  and 
majestically  and  went  with  a  splendid  deliberation  to  a 
doom  that  was  invested  in  a  kind  of  sublime  pathos  by 
the  victim's  total  unconsciousness  that  she  was  about  to 
embrace  it. 

"  Charles,  I  regret  to  find  that  you  are  under  the  influ- 
ence of  drink.  But  you  are  not  to  suppose  that  your 
Hooliganism  will  divorce  me  from  a  sense  of  my  duty. 
Every  word  I  have  used  in  regard  to  that  abandoned  child 
I  am  prepared  to  reaffirm.  She  is  as  great  a  disgrace  to 
her  sex  as  you  are  to  yours." 

"  Very  good,"  said  Lord  Bosket  quietly.  "  Now  you 
get  a  damned  good  hidin'." 

Before  the  astounded  lady  could  realize  what  was  taking 
place,  the  sheep  in  the  wolf-skin  had  made  a  grab  at  the 
Empire  writing-table,  had  seized  the  manuscript  copy  of 
the  "  Inquiry  into  the  Decay  of  Feeling,"  had  torn  it  in  a 
hundred  pieces  and  flung  them  all  over  the  carpet.  His 
next  act  was  to  turn  to  the  side-table,  and  at  one  fell 
swoop  to  knock  off  the  entire  Hipsley  Edition  of  the  works 
of  Lady  Bosket.  For  quite  a  minute  he  played  football 
with  these  chaste  volumes ;  and  a  room  that  viras  overbur- 
dened with  objects  of  art  suffered  sadly  in  consequence. 
The  volume  containing  the  imperishable  "  Poses  "  them- 
selves he  kicked  through  a  gorgeous  mirror  in  the  centre 
of  the  chimneypiece,  which  fell  from  its  elevation  and  was 
dashed  into  fragments  oh  the  tiles  of  the  hearth.  Pieces 
of  old  china,  Sevres  vases,  and  choice  cameos  came  to 
destruction  on  those  relentless  tiles.     An  old  cabinet,  beau- 


THE  LADY  BOSKET  AT  HOME  371 

tiful  and  rare,  that  stood  in  a  corner,  then  received  his 
attention.  He  overturned  it  completely,  and  in  the  process 
innumerable  souvenirs  from  admirers  in  all  parts  of  the 
world  were  scattered  about  the  room.  Not  here,  how- 
ever, did  the  debacle  end.  The  sheep  in  the  wolf-skin 
was  further  inflamed  by  the  sight  of  a  full-length  portrait 
in  oils  by  a  Royal  Academician  of  the  author  of  the  Poses 
in  her  coronet,  which  hung  on  the  wall  in  a  massive  gilt 
frame.  This  admired  work  was  plucked  from  its  place  of 
honour  and  hurled  with  a  reverberating  crash  through  the 
middle  of  a  stained-glass  window  into  the  conservatory 
behind. 

The  sheep  in  the  wolf-skin  then  turned  his  attention  to 
his  gifted  spouse.  He  found  her  cowering  in  a  corner  of 
the  room,  trembling  with  terror.  So  little  had  nature 
fitted  her  to  cope  with  crises  of  this  kind  that  at  this  mo- 
ment she  could  neither  think,  act,  nor  utter  protest.  Her 
glasses  had  fallen  to  the  ground  and  had  been  trampled 
to  pieces  under  the  feet  of  the  monster. 

"  Now  then,  missis,"  said  her  lord,  still  in  the  gloomy 
and  pensive  manner  in  which  he  had  wrecked  the  furni- 
ture.    "  Come  out  o'  that." 

He  took  the  gifted  lady  by  the  hair  and  proceeded  to 
drag  her  out  of  her  refuge.  In  the  act  a  portion  of  it,  in 
the  form  of  a  toupee,  came  away  in  his  hand.  He  then 
administered  a  slap  with  the  open  palm  on  one  side  of  the 
head,  and  then  one  on  the  other  side,  not  very  hard,  but 
rather  in  the  pensive  and  disinterested  manner  he  would 
have  bestowed  a  similar  correction  on  a  puppy  that  had 
been  guilty  of  a  trifling  misdemeanour. 

"  Damn  it,  missis,  you  deserve  a  lot  more  than  that,"  he 
said  thoughtfully,  after  this  discipline  had  been  adminis- 
tered. Nevertheless,  the  first  of  these  rather  formal  and 
perfunctory  strokes  shook  the  gifted  lady  to  the  centre 
of  her  being;  at  the  second  she  sank  to  her  knees  among 
the  debris  and  proceeded  to  swoon  in  abject  terror  at  the 
feet  of  her  lord. 

By  the  time  the  horrified  clergyman's  daughter  had  sum- 
moned enough  courage  to  invade  the  riot,  it  was  an  ex- 


372  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

traordinary  scene  that  rewarded  her  hardihood.  The  tem- 
ple of  the  Muses  had  suffered  earthquake  and  edipse ;  but 
that  was  not  the  most  memorable  part  of  the  spectacle 
which  confronted  her.  The  husband  of  "  the  most  dis- 
tinguished woman  of  our  time  "  was  seen  to  be  supporting 
his  fainting  lady  on  his  knee.  He  was  fondling  her  hands 
and  addressing  terms  of  endearment  to  her,  while  she, 
poor  soul,  lay  in  his  arms  panting  and  sobbing,  and  cling- 
ing to  them  with  a  face  dissolved  in  tears. 

"  Dry  your  eyes,  poor  old  thing,"  her  lord  was  saying 
in  tender  accents.  "  Be  a  good  old  thing  in  the  future, 
and  it  shan't  happen  to  you  any  more.  You  are  not  hurt, 
you  know;  I  hardly  touched  you.  If  you  had  had  your 
rights,  you  know,  you  would  ha'  got  a  lot  more  than  that. 
But  a  kiss  now,  and  we  will  call  the  account  square.  Dry 
your  eyes,  poor  old  thing.  Miss  Mottrom,  ring  the  bell, 
and  we  will  get  the  poor  old  gal  a  cup  of  tea.  She's  a  bit 
upset." 

"  N-n-no,"  moaned  the  tearful  lady,  "  d-do  not  ring. 
Miss  Mottrom.  I — I  am  not  fit  to  be  seen  in  this  state. 
N-nobody  must  know.  I — il  shall  be  recovered  pres- 
ently." 

The  tearful  lady  must  be  left  to  recover  by  degrees  in 
the  tenderly  solicitous  arms  of  her  lord,  who  in  the  mean- 
time is  bathing  her  temples  diligently  in  eau-de-Cologne. 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII 

IN    WHICH    MR.    BREFFIT    THE    YOUNGER    PUTS    A    HYPHEN 
TO    HIS    NAME 

IT  was  in  the  middle  of  August  that  it  was  arranged  that 
Harriet  was  to  be  given  in  marriage  to  John  Henry 
Clapham  Raynes,  tenth  Duke  of  Wimbledon.  Broke's 
opposition  was  instinctive  rather  than  reasoned,  tacit 
rather  than  expressed.  Still,  there  were  points  where 
expedience  merged  itself  into  duty.  The  match  could 
never  have  the  sanction  of  his  heart,  but  in  the  present 
state  of  his  affairs  it  might  contribute  substantially  to  their 
well-being  as  a  family.  And  it  was  the  first  doctrine  he 
held,  the  one  to  which  he  clung  with  a  tenacity  that  made 
it  sacred,  the  one  to  which  the  long  line  of  his  name  had 
clung  before  him,  that  each  individual  member  of  the  au- 
gust institution  to  which  they  had  the  honour  to  belong 
must  sink  their  personal  desires  in  the  common  weal. 

In  a  sense  this  proposed  marriage  also  went  against 
the  humane  judgment  of  Mrs.  Broke.  But  necessity  did 
much  to  soften  her  scruples.  The  child  would  be  settled 
in  life  in  a  sufficiently  handsome  manner;  and  certainly 
that  was  a  consideration  that  must  be  allowed  to  stand 
foremost.  They  were  all  going  to  beggary  together.  It 
would  be  little  less  than  a  crime  to  throw  away  a  chance 
of  keeping  a  roof  over  their  heads.  In  the  matter  of 
young  Breffit  this  austere  practical  wisdom  made  her  al- 
most equally  insistent.  In  that  case,  however,  Broke's 
prejudices  were  not  to  be  over-borne.  Even  expedience 
itself  was  powerless  before  them. 

The  duke  was  given  carte  blanche.  He  had  only  five  to 
choose  from,  it  was  true,  now  that  Delia  was  no  longer 
included  in  the  fold.  But  the  noble  suitor  evinced  no  bias 
in  favour  of  any  particular  one.     One  was  as  good  as  an- 

373 


374  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

other  in  his  impartial  view.  It  savoured  of  an  act  of 
supererogation  invidiously  to  select.  One  and  all  were 
equally  healthy,  equally  homely.  Was  it  not  almost  too 
much  to  ask  that  among  such  abundance  he  should  make 
up  his  mind  and  choose  for  himself?  In  the  end,  finding 
the  task  of  selection  to  be  beyond  his  powers,  he  invoked 
the  aid  of  the  president  of  their  destinies. 

"  My  dear  friend,"  he  said  huskily,  "  which  would  you 
recommend?  They  all  appear  so  worthy,  but  I  cannot 
take  five,  can  I  ?  " 

"  Not  in  civilized  England,  my  dear  Harry.  Have  you 
not,  may  I  ask,  a  slight  predilection  in  favour  of  any  par- 
ticular one  ?  " 

"No,  alas!" 

"  Surely  one  among  them  is  able  to  impose  her  personal- 
ity upon  you  in  some  slight  peculiar  way." 

"  No,  indeed." 

"  How  extravagantly  unimpressionable,  my  poor  dear 
boy!  Cannot  you  concede  something  to  the  feelings  of  a 
mother  ?  " 

"  They  are  all  so  much  alike,"  he  said  plaintively. 

"  Can  you  not  distinguish  between  their  hair,  or  their 
eyes,  or  their  height,  my  dear  Harry  ?  Surely  the  contour 
of  one  among  so  many  must  have  established  a  slight  sense 
of  precedence  in  your  mind.  Shut  your  eyes,  my  dear  boy, 
and  try  to  summon  one." 

"  If  I  shut  my  eyes  they  do  not  come  at  all.  My  dear 
friend,  I  implore  you  to  make  a  suggestion.  The  first 
name  you  give  I  will  accept." 

Mrs.  Broke  laughed  smoothly. 

"  But  surely,  surely,  the  suggestion  should  come  from 
you.  We  women,  you  know,  are  so  sentimental  in  these 
matters.  We  are  ever  seeking  to  pluck  the  dragon's  tooth 
of  sentiment  out  of  our  garden,  but  it  seems  hopeless  to 
destroy  the  horrid  crop  of  fetishes  that  has  been  borne 
upon  it.  Sex  is  a  strange  thing;  ours,  my  dear  Harry, 
even  at  this  time  of  day  will  insist  upon  investing  the  in- 
stitution of  matrimony  with  a  certain  amount  of  romance. 


MR.  BREFFIT  THE  YOUNGER  375 

You  are  acquainted  with  their  names.  Observe  the  pro- 
prieties by  uttering  one  yourself,  as  haphazard  as  you 
please,  and  she  is  yours." 

It  was  the  duke's  turn  to  laugh  now ;  this  he  did  with  a 
wheeziness  that  robbed  the  act  of  its  spontaneity.  But 
the  baffling  nature  of  the  matter  was  expressed  by  a  mild 
light  of  humour  in  his  face.  Still,  there  was  also  his 
grand  hereditary  anxiety  to  observe  the  proprieties. 

"  One  wants  to  do  the  right  thing,  you  know ;  one  must 
always  do  the  right  thing,  mustn't  one?  I  would  wish  to 
avoid  the  conviction  that  the  selection  is  arbitrary. 
Surely,  my  dear  friend,  as  their  mother,  you  can  establish 
a  claim  for  one  of  them,  by  suggesting  some  little  point 
of  priority." 

"  In  the  matter  of  good  looks,  my  dear  Harry,  I  do  not 
think  there  is  a  pin  to  choose  between  them.  They  are  all 
equally  distinguished  by  their  absence.  If  we  were  at  the 
trouble  to  survey  the  area  of  their  noses  I  am  sure  they 
would  all  be  found  to  be  of  equal  dimension.  In  the  col- 
our of  their  eyes,  their  height,  the  hue  of  their  skins  they 
do  not  differ.  If  we  were  at  the  trouble  to  count  the  num- 
ber of  hairs  that  adorn  their  heads,  I  do  not  doubt  that 
they  would  be  found  to  tally  to  a  unit.  There  are  their 
ages,  of  course.  Fortunately  they  were  not  all  born  on 
the  same  day." 

"  But  I  confess,  my  dear  friend,  it  does  not  seem  quite 
the  right  thing  to  make  that  distinction.  I  might  take  the 
eldest  or  I  might  take  the  youngest,  but  is  not  that  just  the 
contingency  that  a  sensitive  person  like  myself  would  wish 
to  avoid  ?  I  would  like  to  find  a  more  adequate  reason  for 
imposing  captivity  upon  the  eldest  beyond  the  fact  that 
she  was  the  first  to  enter  the  world.  I  should  take  com- 
fort from  such  a  reason,  if  it  could  be  found.  I  should 
not  like  to  feel  that  the  disabilities  of  the  firstborn,  under 
which  I  labour  myself,  had  been  invested  at  my  hands  with 
an  additional  gravity." 

"  Your  scruples  do  you  honour,  my  dear  Harry,  but  in 
this  case  I  confess  they  are  uncomfortable." 


376  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  I  feel  that  I  must  do  the  right  thing.  Ha !  I  have  an 
expedient.  Suppose  we  place  the  names  of  the  five  in  a 
hat,  and  draw  out  one  ?  Their  chances  of  escape  will  then 
be  equal ;  and  our  choice  will  be  dignified,  as  it  were,  with 
the  official  sanction  of  Providence." 

"  I  am  sure  your  ingenuity,  my  dear  Harry,  is  calcu- 
lated to  strike  a  death  blow  to  the  feminine  heart;  but  I 
am  afraid  I  can  suggest  no  more  poetic  remedy." 

It  was  by  this  process  of  selection  that  Harriet  became 
the  chosen  nymph. 

"  Ah — Harriet  is  her  name,  I  S€!e,"  said  the  noble 
valetudinarian,  unfolding  the  slip  of  paper  he  had  picked 
out  of  his  hat.  "  I  like  her  name.  I  once  had  an  old 
nurse  whose  name  was  Harriet,  the  kindest  old  soul  I 
ever  knew.  Why  did  I  not  think  of  her?  She  would 
have  resolved  at  once  our  sentimental  difficulty." 

"  Fortunately  the  inspiration  does  not  come  too  late," 
said  Mrs.  Broke,  with  her  mild  laugh.  "  Chance  having 
decreed  in  Harriet's  favour,  the  choice  can  still  have  the 
cachet  of  your  regard  for  your  old  nurse.  The  dear,  de- 
voted old  thing!  I  declare  I  have  fallen  in  love  myself 
with  her  fragrant  memory.  If  you  will  kindly  ring  the 
bell,  Harry,  you  shall  see  the  bride-elect." 

"  Not  to-day,  I  think,  if  you  please,"  said  Harry.  "  I 
fear  I  have  done  a  little  too  much  already.  I  cannot  stand 
excitement  now." 

"  I  would  like  the  child  to  make  your  acquaintance  un- 
der these  conditions,  my  dear  Harry,  if  you  don't  mind. 
I  cannot  help  thinking  it  would  be  wise  for  her  to  see 
you  at  your  worst,  my  dear  boy.  The  more  fragile  the 
flower  the  more  we  women  cherish  it.  I  confess,  Harry, 
it  is  against  one's  preconceived  ideas  for  matrimony  to 
be  graced  at  the  altar  by  the  sacred  flame  of  love ;  but  in 
the  case  of  your  nuptials,  my  poor  dear  boy,  one  is  pre- 
pared to  waive  them  cheerfully.  Indeed  it  would  be  a 
piquant  conclusion  to  a  romantic  episode.  You  pull  the 
name  of  your  duchess  out  of  a  hat,  and  forthwith  she 
prostrates  herself  in  worship  before  you.  Really,  my  poor 
dear  boy,  as  you  sit  here  now  you  fulfil  one's  ideas  ex- 


MR.  BREFFIT  THE  YOUNGER  377 

actly  of  the  manner  in  which  you  ought  to  make  your 
debut  before  the  bride-elect." 

Upon  this  excursus  the  bell  was  rung  and  Harriet  sent 
for.  She  presently  appeared,  perfectly  simple  and  child- 
ishly youthful  of  aspect,  with  a  glow  of  health  in  her 
cheeks. 

"  This  is  the  child,  Harry.  An  honest,  dutiful  creature, 
with  a  sympathetic  nature." 

*'  Ha !  how  d'ye  do  ?  "  The  prospective  husband  sprang 
to  his  feet,  and  offered  a  thin,  nervous  lath  of  a  hand. 

Harriet  accepted  the  hand  with  much  gravity.  In  a  few 
pleasantly  bold  and  incisive  strokes  Mrs.  Broke  outlined 
the  relation  she  had  so  recently  come  to  occupy.  This 
information  also  was  accepted  with  gravity.  A  faint  blush 
may  have  dappled  Harriet's  cheek,  because  the  thing  was 
so  sudden ;  she  may  even  have  been  a  little  startled ;  and 
the  large  eyes  she  directed  upon  the  noble  valetudinarian 
may  not  have  been  without  a  tinge  of  wonder.  But  such 
is  the  value  of  this  particular  disciplinary  system,  that 
Harriet,  observing  the  matter  to  be  under  the  aegis  of  her 
mother,  the  all-powerful,  and  all-wise,  accepted  the  edict 
as  though  it  were  a  law  of  nature. 

During  the  time  intervening  between  the  choice  of  a 
bride,  and  the  transaction  of  the  thousand  and  one  matters 
necessary  to  enable  the  noble  valetudinarian  to  lead  her  to 
the  altar,  Broke  was  in  Cuttisham  several  times.  On  one 
of  these  occasions  he  observed  immediately  in  front  of  him 
a  bowed  and  grey-headed  figure  shuffling  along  the  High 
Street.  There  was  something  strikingly  familiar  in  the 
back  view  of  this  object,  yet  at  that  moment,  with  his  pre- 
occupied eyes  resting  only  casually  upon  it,  he  was  at  a 
loss  to  know  who  it  might  be.  The  force  of  recognition 
was  almost  ridiculous,  and  yet  it  baffled  him.  When,  how- 
ever, the  figure  stopped  and  turned  in  at  the  familiar  door 
of  Mr.  Breffit's  estate  office,  the  remarkable  and  yet  re- 
mote likeness  to  his  agent  rushed  upon  him. 

He  desired  to  consult  the  old  man  upon  several  matters 
of  business.  But  since  Mr.  Breffit  had  gone  to  live  at 
Tufton  Hall  he  was  by  no  means  so  accessible  as  of  yore. 


378  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

It  was  hardly  likely  that  he  would  be  at  his  office  now,  for 
Broke  could  not  bring  himself  to  believe  that  the  bent 
figure  which  had  passed  in  front  of  him  was  that  of  the 
man  he  wished  to  see.     He  decided,  however,  to  inquire. 

He  was  informed  that  Mr.  Breffit  was  there  and  would 
see  him.  And  the  moment  Broke  entered  the  inner  room 
he  was  aware  of  the  fact  that  the  old  man  he  had  failed 
to  recognize  a  few  moments  ago  in  the  street  was  he  who 
now  stood  before  him. 

Broke's  powers  of  observation  were  peculiarly  limited, 
but  he  was  shocked  by  the  change  in  his  agent.  He  had 
last  seen  him  at  Tufton  a  few  months  ago,  a  hale  and 
hearty  old  man,  with  a  keen  zest  in  life  and  an  almost 
boyish  alertness  of  manner.  There  was  no  indication  then 
that  anything  ailed  him.  He  was  one  whom  you  might 
point  out  as  likely  to  live  to  be  a  hundred  years  old.  Now, 
however,  all  was  changed.  The  old  vigour  was  there  no 
longer.  In  lieu  of  the  vivacious  countenance  with  which 
he  was  wont  to  receive  the  first  of  his  clients,  there  was 
only  a  mask  that  had  the  coldness  of  death.  In  every  line 
was  the  evidence  of  a  pitiful  deterioration. 

Upon  the  entrance  of  Broke  this  travesty  of  a  once 
strong  man  lurched  forward  to  greet  him  and  in  the  act 
lost  his  balance  and  nearly  measured  his  length  on  the 
carpet.     The  table  saved  him. 

"  Ah,  Mr.  Broke,"  he  said  in  a  dull  voice,  so  little  like 
his  habitual  eager  tone  that  his  old  client  was  shocked  by 
it.  "  I  see  it's  you.  Pleased  to  see  you  sir.  Won't  you 
sit  down  ?  " 

The  change  in  the  old  man's  manner  was  even  more 
remarkable  than  the  change  in  his  appearance.  The  sup- 
ple, brisk,  ingratiating  air  of  former  days  had  yielded  to 
a  kind  of  husky  vacillation.  It  seemed  to  Broke  as  he 
looked  at  him  that  had  it  not  been  old  Breffit's  boast  that 
he  had  been  a  teetotaller  all  his  life  he  would  have  sup- 
posed he  had  been  drinking  heavily. 

"  'Scuse  me,  sir,"  said  the  old  man,  reeling  before  him 
even  now,  "  but  I'm  not  very  well.  Not  been  at  all  well 
lately,  you  know,  sir." 


MR.  BREFFIT  THE  YOUNGER  379 

"  I  am  indeed  sorry  to  hear  that,"  said  Broke  in  a  tone 
of  concern.     "  What  is  wrong?  " 

The  old  man  put  his  hand  to  his  head  with  the  expres- 
sion of  one  who  suffers  an  overpowering  pain. 

"  I — I  don't  think  I  quite  know  myself,  sir.  I  suppose 
I  must  be  breaking  up." 

"  Surely  not,  my  dear  Breffit.  Not  at  your  time  of  life. 
Why,  do  you  know  when  I  saw  you  earlier  in  the  summer 
I  made  the  remark  to  myself  how  well  you  looked.  A 
country  life  seemed  the — ah — very  thing  for  you." 

"  I  gave  up  the  country  more  than  a  month  ago.  I  found 
it  did  not  agree  with  me,  so  I  returned  to  Cuttisham,  where 
I  was  born,  where  I  have  lived  all  my  life,  and  where,  Mr. 
Broke,  I  mean  to  die." 

Broke  was  distressed  by  the  tone. 

"  I — ah — could  not  have  thought  that  a  country  life 
would  disagree  with  anybody,"  he  said. 

"Ah,  sir,  it  is  not  altogether  a  country  life  that  has 
upset  me.     You  must  not  think  it  is  altogether  that." 

The  old  man  seemed  to  be  gathering  his  resolution  to 
add  something  to  these  words  in  order  to  make  their 
meaning  plainer;  but  as  he  came  to  the  point  he  stopped 
and  abruptly  turned  away  his  face. 

"  I  am  really  sorry  to  see  you  so  run  down,  Breffit," 
said  his  oldest  client  with  grave  kindliness. 

When  all  was  said,  the  old  fellow  was  one  of  the  best 
and  truest  friends  and  servants  man  ever  had.  That  sight 
of  him  installed  at  Tufton  a  few  months  ago,  in  a  place 
that  nature  had  never  intended  should  belong  to  him,  had 
caused  his  gorge  to  rise  against  him,  it  was  true.  But 
after  all  that  was  but  a  very  minor  incident  compared 
with  the  harmonious  intercourse  of  many  years.  He  was 
not  the  man  to  forget  services  faithfully  rendered.  Now 
to  find  poor  old  Breffit  broken  down  utterly  in  mind  and 
body  was  to  think  only  of  the  benefactions  received  at  his 
hands. 

"  Have  you  seen  a  doctor,  Breffit  ?  I — ah — suppose  you 
have.  I  hope  it  will  not  prove  so  serious  as  you  think.  I 
feel  sure  that  a  man  of  your  fine  constitution,  a  constitu- 


38o  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

tion  that  has  always  been  envied  by  all  who  have  known 
you,  cannot  be  suffering  from  old  age  yet  awhile.  You 
are  not  much  the  wrong  side  of  sixty  ?  " 

"  Seventy-one,  sir.  Although  people  do  say  I  have  never 
looked  my  age.  You  see,  sir,  I  have  led  such  a  busy  and 
active  life  that  I  have  had  no  time  to  grow  old.  I  have 
been  a  worker  all  my  life,  Mr.  Broke,  but  suddenly  it  has 
come  upon  me  that  I  can  work  no  more.  It  has  come 
upon  me  all  at  once  during  the  last  week  or  two.  I  am 
about  done,  sir,  I  am  about  done." 

"  No,  no,  my  dear  Breffit." 

*'  I  have  had  my  innings,  sir.  There  is  nothing  to  carry 
me  on  now.  There  is  nothing  to  work  for,  nothing  to 
look  forward  to.  Oh,  my  God,  I  wish  to-night  I  could  go 
to  bed  and  never  wake  any  more ! " 

With  an  outburst  of  querulous  passion  which,  to  one  of 
Brokers  self-contained  spirit,  was  ineffably  shocking,  the 
old  man  suddenly  covered  his  face  with  his  hands  and 
burst  into  tears.  The  next  instant,  however,  he  had  re- 
covered sufficiently  to  proceed  with  his  rather  piteous 
monotone. 

"  At  my  time  of  life,  you  see,  sir,  a  man  cannot  get  new 
hopes  and  ideas  and  begin  all  over  again.  He  has  not  the 
spirit  of  a  younger  man  to  begin  building  anew  when  his 
fine  castles  that  have  taken  him  the  best  part  of  a  lifetime 
to  set  up  have  fallen  about  his  ears.  Only  one  thing  do  I 
ask  now,  sir,  and  it  is  the  thing  your  doctors  would  deny 
me  if  they  could.  But  they  will  not  be  able,  they  will  not 
be  able." 

"  You  must  not  talk  like  that,  Breffit,  you  must  not 
indeed.     Such  men  as  you  cannot  be  spared." 

Again  the  tears  began  to  trickle  down  the  face  of  his 
agent. 

"  You  speak  very  kindly,  Mr.  Broke,  and  it  gives  me 
pleasure  to  hear  you  say  that.  It  comforts  me  to  know 
I  am  not  despised  by  everybody." 

"  I — ah — assure  you,  my  dear  Breffit,  that  so  far  from 
being  despised  you  have  long  been  the  admiration  of  many 
besides  myself." 


MR.  BREFFIT  THE  YOUNGER  381 

"  Ah,  sir,  you  do  not  know,  you  do  not  know !  With  all 
your  kindness  towards  one  who  is  old  and  unhappy  you 
cannot  understand.  The  fact  is,  I  am  heart-broken,  sir. 
You  cannot  know  what  it  is  for  the  children  you  have 
cherished  all  these  long  years  of  anxiety  and  toil  to  turn 
against  you." 

Broke  recoiled  involuntarily.  The  old  man's  words 
were  like  a  red-hot  wire  being  drawn  across  a  nerve. 

"  You  don't  know  what  it  is,  sir,  to  suffer  that  from  an 
only  son,  in  whom  all  your  hopes  have  been  centred.  You 
don't  know  what  it  is,  sir,  and  you  never  will  know  what 
it  is  to  have  your  latter  days  embittered  by  one  whom  you 
have  spent  the  flower  of  your  years  in  fostering ;  for  whom 
you  would  have  parted  with  the  coat  off  your  back;  to 
whom  you  would  have  given  your  last  penny." 

The  sweat  burst  out  upon  Broke's  forehead.  He  strove 
to  close  his  ears  against  the  old  man's  voice. 

"  I  cannot  tell  you,  sir " — there  was  a  horrid  voice 
inside  Broke  that  took  a  diabolical  pleasure  in  re-echoing 
every  word  the  old  man  uttered — "  what  hopes  I  had  for 
my  boy.  I  procured  him  the  finest  education,  sir,  school 
and  college  too.  I  brought  him  up  to  a  high  ideal.  I 
bought  a  noble  house  and  gave  it  to  him ;  and  during  my 
own  life,  sir,  I  gave  him  half  my  fortune,  that  he  might 
be  able  to  hold  up  his  head  before  .the  world.  And  now, 
sir,  having  done  all  this,  in  what  manner  does  he  reward 
me  ?  I  will  tell  you,  Mr.  Broke.  He  laughs  at  me  behind 
my  back,  and  he  shuts  the  door  of  his  house  in  my  face." 

A  succession  of  hard  sobs  barred  the  old  man's  voice, 
and  he  was  compelled  to  wait  until  they  had  passed. 

"  Yes,  sir,  he  shuts  the  door  of  his  house  in  my  face, 
the  house  I  had  bought  for  him  in  the  sweat  of  my  brow. 
I  wonder  if  those  dear  children  of  yours,  Mr.  Broke, 
could  cause  their  father  that  sort  of  pain  ?  You  may  well 
not  understand,  sir.  It  had  always  been  a  dream  of  mine, 
sir,  that  my  boy  should  grow  up  to  be  like  yours.  I  know 
I  am  a  rough  diamond  myself;  a  self-made  man  as  all 
the  world  knows.  But  I  wanted  my  son  to  be  like  that 
fine  lad  of  yours,  Mr.  Broke.     And  I  did  by  my  boy  as 


382  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

you  did  by  yours,  sir ;  I  lavished  money  on  his  upbringing 
and  afterwards  placed  him  in  a  position  to  do  it  justice. 
And  now — and  now !  " 

The  old  man  was  unable  to  go  on.  And  an  anguish  of 
spirit  not  less  than  his  own  had  been  communicated  to  the 
listener.  The  man  before  him  was  merged  from  the  ma- 
chine of  business  into  the  human  father.  The  same  plaint 
re-echoed  in  both  hearts.  They  were  drawn  together  by 
the  common  theme  of  a  son's  ingratitude.  Broke  had 
sought  to  banish  his  own  son  from  his  thoughts  by  an 
effort  of  the  will;  but  he  had  been  taught  already  that, 
do  what  he  would,  the  spectre  must  be  forever  lurking  in 
the  outskirts  of  his  mind.  The  analogy  between  his 
agent's  case  and  his  own  was  unbearable.  Even  in  his 
despair,  however,  there  was  the  spark  of  comfort  that  his 
own  son  had  not  been  guilty  of  this  degree  of  sordid 
meanness.  There  was  that  shred  of  consolation  left. 
Thus,  when  the  winter  wind  strikes  our  numb  souls  do  we 
stretch  the  threadbare  mantles  of  our  pride  to  cover  them ! 

*'  I  have  not  the  strength  to  get  over  it  now,"  said  the 
maudlin  old  man.  "  I  am  heart-broken.  I  am  not  good 
enough  for  the  fine  friends  he  bought  with  the  money  I 
fought  so  hard  to  win  for  him.  He  and  his  fine  friends 
laugh  at  the  old  man  behind  his  back,  and  when  one  or 
another  of  them  happens  to  mistake  him  for  the  butler  it 
is  the  finest  joke  in  the  world.  It  is  Mr.  Hamilton-Breffit 
with  him  now,  Mr.  George  Hamilton-Breffit,  with  a  hyphen. 
Such  a  common  name  as  his  father's  is  not  good  enough 
for  him  now.  The  only  thing  about  me  that  is  good 
enough  for  him  is  my  money.  That  is  still  good  enough 
for  him,  just  as  I  was  good  enough  so  long  as  I  could  be 
useful.  But  I  cannot  be  useful  to  him  any  more,  do  you 
see,  sir?  He  is  to  marry  the  daughter  of  an  earl,  and 
then  it  will  be  Mr.  George  and  Lady  Augusta  Hamilton- 
Breffit.  Of  course  he  could  not  have  such  '  a  shocking 
old  bounder  as  me  about  the  place  ' — I  am  quoting  his  own 
words,  sir — could  he?  while  that  was  being  arranged. 
But  for  one  thing,  Mr.  Broke,  I  rejoice.  It  was  wise 
and  right  of  you  to  have  none  of  him.    You  could  see 


MR.  BREFFIT  THE  YOUNGER  383 

what  he  was,  sir,  all  the  time^  with  your  knowledge  of  the 
world,  even  before  my  own  eyes  were  opened.  Ah,  sir, 
that  was  a  providential  thing.  It  would  have  grieved  me 
to  see  such  a  one  polluting  such  a  fine  old  family  as  yours. 
I  must  ask  pardon  of  you,  Mr.  Broke,  for  ever  making 
the  suggestion.  But  you  see,  sir,  he  had  not  come  out  in 
his  true  colours  then." 

Overborne  by  the  recital  of  his  sorrows,  the  old  man 
lurched  to  a  cupboard  and  produced  a  glass  and  a  bottle  of 
brandy. 

"  I  have  to  take  a  little  something  now  to  keep  me  go- 
ing," he  said  apologetically.  "  I  do  not  think  I  could  bear 
up  under  it  at  all  if  I  did  not." 

Broke  laid  his  hand  on  his  shoulder,  not  without  emo- 
tion. 

"  Don't  you — ah — think,  my  dear  Breffit  that  if  you — 
ah — went  away  to  fresh  scenes  for  a  bit  it  might  pull 
you  together?  Why  not  travel?  I  feel  sure  a  doctor 
would  advise  it.  There  is  nothing  like  a  complete  change 
to  pull  a  man  together." 

Mr.  Breffit  made  a  hollow  laugh. 

**  It  is  kindly  meant,  Mr.  Broke,  and  I  thank  you,  but 
you  don't  understand  what  it  means  to  me.  All  the  change 
of  scene  in  the  world  cannot  help  me.  Nothing  will  ever 
put  me  right  any  more.  I  don't  want  to  be  put  right,  sir. 
I  am  old  and  lonely  and  tired.  Life  has  no  purpose  now. 
I  want  to  die  now  and  leave  my  money  to  a  good  cause. 
A  quarter  of  a  million  is  the  sum.  It  seems  a  lot,  does  it 
not,  sir?  Every  penny  of  it  have  I  earned  myself,  yet  it 
has  brought  me  no  pleasure.  A  few  months  ago  I  was 
worth  half  a  million,  but  half  of  that  I  gave  away  to  him 
I  can  never  mention  more.  I  don't  know  what  to  do  with 
the  rest,  sir.  But  I  will  write  off  that  little  item  of  Mrs. 
Broke's;  and  there  are  several  other  trifling  little  items 
that  the  estate  has  owed  me  at  various  times  that  I  shall 
write  off  too.  What  are  a  few  pounds  like  that  to  me? 
I  have  neither  kith  nor  kin  in  the  world  but  that  one ; 
I  don't  know  to  what  use  I  can  put  my  money.  I  should 
have  liked  it  to  have  done  a  little  good  to  somebody,  to 


384  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

somebody  in  whom  I  took  an  interest;  it  has  done  no 
good  to  me  and  mine.  I  should  like  to  feel  that  my  life 
has  not  been  quite  in  vain." 

"  No  one  can — ah — say  that,  my  dear  Breffit."  Broke 
was  touched  keenly  by  the  old  man's  despair.  "  I — ah — 
am  not  in  the  habit  of — ah — speaking  without  reflection, 
but  I  can  say  from  my  heart  that  not  in  our  time  at  any 
rate  shall  we — ah — ^landowners  look  on  your  like  again." 

The  enfeebled  old  man  drank  off  the  brandy  he  had 
poured  out  in  the  glass.  He  then  peered  rather  timidly 
at  the  first  among  his  clients  with  a  wistful  brightness  in 
his  dull  eyes. 

''  It  gives  me  pleasure  to  hear  you  say  that,  Mr.  Broke ; 
it  is  just  what  I  should  like  to  have  said  of  me.  I — I 
thank  you." 

Suddenly  he  bent  forward  to  his  oldest  client  with  some- 
thing of  his  former  vivacity. 

'*I  wish,  Mr.  Broke,  you  were  not  so  proud,"  he  said 
wistfully. 

Broke  did  not  reply  to  a  charge  that  he  was  prepared 
to  sustain  against  himself.  And  he  was  far  too  obtuse  to 
be  able  to  trace  these  rather  odd  words  to  their  source. 
In  his  mind  there  was  not  the  faintest  connection  between 
this  speech  and  that  which  had  preceded  it.  No  doubt  the 
poor  old  fellow  was  a  good  deal  undermined.  The  old 
man,  meeting  with  no  response  had  not  the  courage  to 
pursue  a  subject  which  had  lately  come  to  occupy  a  place 
in  his  thoughts. 

"  You  hear  people  say,"  he  continued,  with  a  relapse 
into  his  dreary  strain,  "  that  wealth  means  happiness. 
But  from  my  heart,  sir,  I  say  it  is  a  curse.  It  is  the 
possession  of  money  alone  that  has  brought  me  to  this. 
It  is  money  that  has  made  my  only  son  a  better  man  than 
his  father;  had  I  remained  poor  and  he  had  been  poor 
also  he  would  never  have  broken  my  heart  by  despising 
me  in  my  old  age.  Wealth  is  responsible  for  evils  far 
beyond  those  of  poverty.  I  began  poor  enough,  God 
knows!  but  when,  fifty  years  ago,  I  had  only  bread  and 
cheese  to  my  dinner,  life  was  a  very  different  affair." 


MR.  BREFFIT  THE  YOUNGER  385 

For  a  long  time  the  old  man  went  on  in  this  strain. 
Broke  remained  deeply  affected  by  the  change  that  had 
taken  place  in  that  sane  and  alert  spirit;  and  he  was  also 
oppressed  by  a  sense  of  analogy  to  those  terrible  emotions 
that  had  lately  taxed  his  own  nature.  Thus  at  the  first 
opportunity  he  made  his  escape. 

It  was  well  to  breathe  again  the  outer  air  after  being 
confined  in  that  intolerable  room  reeking  with  the  fumes 
of  brandy.  But  every  step  of  his  way  back  to  Covenden 
he  could  not  rid  his  mind  of  the  shadow  of  the  once 
strong  man  he  had  left  there.  Broke  had  never  had  the 
least  tenderness  for  his  agent  in  his  capacity  as  a  human 
being.  He  stood  to  him  in  the  relation  of  a  machine  for 
the  conduct  of  business,  pure  and  simple;  and  more  than 
once  the  thought  had  occurred  to  him  that  even  considered 
as  a  machine,  he  was  neither  pure  nor  simple.  He  had 
always  looked  upon  him  as  one,  over  and  above  his  in- 
disputable business  gifts,  as  a  rather  vulgar  charlatan 
whom  it  was  useful  to  have  at  your  elbow  when  you  were 
compelled  by  the  remorseless  conditions  imposed  upon 
those  who  happened  to  be  landowners,  landlords,  and 
agriculturists  to  have  dealings  with  other  vulgar  charlatans. 
He  had  the  useful  knack  of  looking  after  your  interests 
at  the  same  time  as  he  looked  after  his  own.  To-day,  for 
the  first  time,  the  old  man  was  allowed  to  take  his  place 
in  the  great  human  hierarchy.  The  overthrow  of  a  mind 
so  strong  was  one  of  the  most  painful  things  Broke  had 
ever  witnessed. 

All  the  way  home  he  could  think  of  nothing  but  that 
blurred  and  broken  figure.  It  may  have  been  that  he  had 
snatched  as  from  a  mirror  a  glimpse  of  his  own  image.  It 
seemed  strange  indeed  that  he  should  find  himself  with  so 
much  in  common  with  such  a  man  as  old  Breffit.  In  the 
bosom  of  the  feudalist  the  thought  seemed  fantastic.  It 
almost  seemed  that  one  would  have  to  admit  that  all  the 
world  over  human  nature  was  akin.  To  this  representa- 
tive of  an  elder  day  the  diverse  units  of  the  social  order 
not  only  had  a  distinguishing  set  of  manners  and  customs, 
other  modes  of  speech  and  dress  and  points  of  view,  but 


386  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

their  souls  and  bodies  and  their  fundamental  emotions 
were  widely  different  too.  It  was  peculiarly  irksome  to 
be  in  danger  of  having  to  admit  that  such  a  person  as 
Joseph  Breffit  could  have  so  much  as  a  heart-beat  in  com- 
mon with  a  person  such  as  Edmund  Broke. 


CHAPTER  XXXIX 

THE   LAST    NIGHT 

JUST-tarnished  summer  passed  to  autumn  of  the  mellow 
tints  and  afterwards  to  the  later  season  of  nature's 
desolation,  but  it  was  no  more  than  that  of  the  family 
of  Covenden.  The  young  voices  of  laughter  and  merri- 
ment seemed  to  have  died  with  the  leaves  of  those  sum- 
mer days.  From  the  shock  of  Delia's  flight  they  could 
not  recover.  Coming  almost  immediately  upon  the  epi- 
sode of  their  brother  it  was  a  crowning  blow.  It  knocked 
their  little  world  askew ;  and  in  their  dazed  and  wondering 
fashion  they  felt  that  nothing  could  ever  set  it  right. 

They  entered  into  the  sudden  marriage  of  Harriet  with- 
out enthusiasm.  All  things  that  had  the  sanction  of  their 
parents  they  knew  how  to  accept  without  question,  in  the 
same  way  that  they  could  not  tolerate  the  things  that 
were  without  it.  But  they  thought  with  a  shudder  of  the 
man  their  sister  was  to  marry. 

The  night  before  she  was  to  be  married  they  sat  up  far 
beyond  their  usual  hour.  They  clustered  very  close  to- 
gether in  their  common  room,  all  unutterably  sad  and 
feeling  rather  frightened.  To  have  been  able  to  indulge 
in  tears  would  have  been  a  relief,  but  that  had  never  been 
their  habit. 

"  We  shall  miss  you,  old  Hat,"  they  said.  "  How  we 
shall  miss  you !  " 

The  tight-lipped  Harriet  clung  first  in  the  arms  of  one 
and  then  in  those  of  another.  She  was  very  cold  and 
pale  and  her  heart  was  beating  violently. 

"  I  wish  you  were  not  going  to  leave  us.  Hat,"  said 
Philippa  mournfully. 

Harriet  clung  to  her  more  convulsively,  and  buried  her 

387 


388  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

cold  face  against  her.  There  was  the  harsh,  repressed 
sound  of  a  sob. 

As  they  sat  in  a  half-circle  round  the  fire-place,  which 
had  no  more  than  a  few  dying  embers  in  it,  their  chins 
were  resting  on  their  hands  and  their  heavy  eyes  could 
see  nothing  but  darkness.  Out  of  their  slender  pocket- 
money  they  had  subscribed  for  a  wedding  present  to  make 
to  their  sister;  a  riding-whip  mounted  in  silver,  with  the 
letter  "  H  "  engraved  upon  the  handle.  Joan  placed  it  in 
her  hand  with  a  low-voiced  apology  for  its  humble  char- 
acter. 

"  We  would  have  bought  you  a  tiara,  old  Hat,"  she  said, 
"  with  real  diamonds  in  it  if  only  we  had  had  the  money. 
We  cannot  tell  you  what  we  would  have  bought  you  if 
only  we  had  had  the  money.  Oh!  how  we  shall  miss 
you!" 

She  pressed  her  lips  against  her  sister's  cold  cheek. 

"  The  old  jolly  times  will  never  come  back,"  said  Mar- 
garet.    "  What  dear  jolly  days  they  have  been,  but  they 


There  came  a  dead  hush.  They  all  gazed  straight  be- 
fore them,  with  their  eyes  growing  dimmer  and  dim- 
mer. 

*'  I  wish  Del  was  here,"  said  Jane  suddenly  and  softly. 

"  Poor  little  Del !  "  said  Margaret,  with  an  equal  sud- 
denness and  softness. 

"  Hush,"  said  Joan. 

"'  Delia  is  happy,"  said  Harriet,  softly  putting  her  arm 
round  the  trembling  form  of  Joan. 

"  Hush,"  said  Joan  again. 

"  We  shall  never  all  ride  to  the  meet  again  with  father 
and  Billy  and  Uncle  Charles,"  said  Philippa. 

"  Hush,  hush,"  said  Joan,  trembling  more  violently  in 
the  arms  of  Harriet. 

"  We  did  not  know  what  dear  sweet  times  they  were," 
said  Philippa.  "  Only  now  do  we  begin  to  realize  it,  now 
that  they  are  gone.  It  does  not  seem  possible  that  so  much 
can  have  changed  in  one  short  little  year.     Still,  in  those 


THE  LAST  NIGHT  389 

that  are  to  come  we  shall  be  able  to  remember  those  dear, 
dear  old  days,  and  think  that  we  were  happy  once." 

"  Don't !  "  they  implored  her. 

"  I  cannot  help  it,"  said  Philippa,  who  was  shivering  in 
the  arms  of  Margaret. 

"  But  there  is  perhaps  a  silver  lining  to  a  cloud  like 
this,"  said  Harriet,  with  a  valour  that  was  desperate  when 
accompanied  by  that  white  face  and  that  cruelly  beating 
heart.  "  There  will  be  no  more  cycling  to  hounds  for 
you  four,  will  there?  The  dear,  dear  old  horses  will  go 
round  now  all  the  season  through  with  the  one  that 
Uncle  Charles  is  going  to  give  you.  I  said  good-bye  to 
all  of  them  this  morning.  And  I  do  believe  they  knew. 
They  nearly  made  me  cry,  the  dear  old  things.  I  am  sure 
they  knew  I  was  leaving  them.  It  will  not  seem  like  liv- 
ing at  all  to  be  without  the  Doctor  and  Crusader  and  the 
Colonel,  and  Pat,  and  Persephone,  and  Whitenose,  and 
Juliet,  and  Robin,  and  poor  lame  old  Prudence." 

"Which  will  you  take,  old  Hat?"  said  Joan.  "Per- 
sephone was  always  your  special  friend,  wasn't  she?  It 
was  you  who  gave  her  a  grand-sounding  name  to  make  up 
to  her  a  bit,  because  she  was  not  quite  so  well-bred  as 
some  of  the  others.  But  you  shall  have  one  of  the  thor- 
oughbreds too.    There  is  the  Doctor  and  Pat  and  Juliet." 

"  No,  Joan,"  said  their  sister,  with  a  choking  firmness. 
"  I  would  dearly  love  one  of  them  just  for  the  sake  of  the 
dear  old  days  that  will  never  come  back.  But  it  would 
not  be  fair.  I  shall  have  ever  so  many  horses,  although 
they  can  never,  never  be  the  same." 

No  amount  of  insistence  on  the  part  of  her  self-sacri^- 
ficing  sisters  would  induce  her  to  change  her  mind.  She 
too  had  learned  to  subdue  her  private  feelings  for  the 
common  good. 

There  was  present  at  this  last  gathering  so  mournful,  so 
intimate,  so  tender  beyond  expression,  a  sense  of  the 
impending  that  they  scould  not  explain.  Billy  and  Delia 
were  lost  to  them  for  ever ;  their  father  was  ageing  visibly 
every  day;  to-morrow  Harriet  was  to  leave  them  for  a 
life  of  unhappiness;  but  over  and  above  all  this  present 


390  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

sorrow,  there  was  a  sense  of  something  more  potent,  be- 
cause unknown,  that  was  to  come.  Shadows  out  of  the 
future  were  thrown  before  their  eyes.  To-night  they 
seemed  strangely  infected  with  the  sense  of  tears  in  mor- 
tal things. 

Mrs.  Broke  visited  Harriet  that  night  as  she  lay  in  her 
bed,  sleepless  and  wide-eyed.  She  bent  over  the  white 
face  and  touched  the  cold  forehead  with  her  lips. 

"It  is  for  us  all,  my  dear  one,"  she  said  in  a  low  voice. 
"  I  thank  you  for  being  so  sweet,  and  patient  and  obedi- 
ent. It  may  seem  a  little  hard  to  you,  my  dear  one ;  but 
for  your  father  and  myself  and  your  sisters  it  is  also  hard. 
But  you  have  always  been  so  good  and  brave;  and  you 
have  never  hesitated  to  help  your  father  and  myself  in  any 
way  that  was  asked  of  you.  All  of  you  have  always  been 
perfectly  good  and  kind  and  unselfish,  always  a  great  com- 
fort to  us  both." 

Harriet,  in  common  with  her  sisters,  had  passed  her  life 
in  fear  of  the  awful  being  she  called  mother.  She  was 
afraid  of  her  at  this  moment,  although  the  awful  being 
was  talking  to  her  in  a  manner  of  tenderness  that  was 
entirely  new.  The  prepossessions  of  a  lifetime  are  not 
to  be  uprooted  in  a  minute.  Yet  her  fear  of  her  mother 
was  far  less  than  that  of  the  new  life  that  lay  before  her. 
There  would  be  no  affectionate  bond  of  sisterhood,  no 
boon  companionships,  no  proud  yet  tender  father,  no  dear, 
querulous,  kind-hearted  Uncle  Charles  to  alleviate  the 
sense  of  loneliness,  or  enlighten  that  black  abyss  that  was 
called  the  future.  Convulsively  as  she  had  clung  to  her 
sisters  an  hour  ago,  she  clung  to  her  mother  now. 

Mrs.  Broke  was  deeply  affected  by  the  passionate  si- 
lence of  the  child.  The  grip  of  the  cold  hands,  the  pres- 
sure of  the  cold  cheek  against  her  own,  the  frozen  sobs, 
the  roving,  frightened  eyes  told  too  poignantly  of  all  that 
was  passing  in  her.  Increasingly  difficult  as  it  had  be- 
come of  late,  it  had  never  been  harder  than  at  this  mo- 
ment to  keep  the  mask  of  inscrutability  upon  her  face. 
Her  very  soul  had  fallen  faint  of  late.  Life  was  grow- 
ing to  demand  too  much.     Less  and  less  were  the  gains 


THE  LAST  NIGHT  39i 

becoming  worth  the  price.  To  what  end  was  all  this 
pinching  and  scraping  and  contriving,  this  frenzy  of  ex- 
pedience ?  She  pressed  a  last  caress  on  the  cold  lips,  and 
quitted  the  room  with  unsteady  haste.  She  went  down 
to  her  husband,  who  sat  reading  the  Field  in  the  enfold- 
ing gloom  and  silence  of  the  library.  At  the  sound  of 
her  entrance  he  put  down  the  newspaper,  and  looked  at 
his  wife  earnestly. 

"  Well,  old  girl." 

Of  late  he  had  exhibited  a  tenderness  for  her  which  she 
was  inclined  to  feel  as  slightly  exaggerated  in  one  of  such 
a  self-contained  and  frugal  spirit. 

"  You  look  tired,"  he  said,  peering  at  her  through  the 
shadows  cast  by  the  reading-lamp.  "  You  work  that  brain 
of  yours  too  hard.  I  wish  you  didn't  over-ride  it  quite 
so  much.     You  want  a  rest." 

Mrs.  Broke  forced  a  laugh.  Somehow  it  jangled  a  dis- 
cord among  his  nerves. 

"  Suppose  you  go  to  the  sea  for  a  fortnight  and  take  the 
girls?    They  want  a  change,  too." 

"  Yes,  Edmund,  if  you  come  also." 

"What  do  I  want  with  a  change?  I  am  as  strong  as 
an  oak  tree.     Besides,  what  about  the  shoot  next  week  ?  " 

His  wife  looked  only  at  his  heavy  eyes  and  his  sunken 
cheeks.  The  appearance  of  the  robust,  ruddy  farmer  of 
the  early  summer  was  with  him  no  more.  In  a  few  brief 
months  he  had  completely  changed.  As  they  looked  at 
one  another  a  curious  silence  fell  suddenly  between  them. 
They  were  both  thinking  of  the  same  thing. 

"  I  wish  we  had  not  this  wedding  to-morrow,"  said 
Broke,  terminating  the  silence  with  the  same  old  abrupt- 
ness with  which  it  had  begun.  "  We  shall  miss  poor  little 
Hat  very  much." 

"  The  child  is  very  brave  and  good.  But  it  is  another 
vacant  place.  One  hardly  understands  what  they  mean  to 
one  until  they  go.  Three  in  a  few  brief  months !  Do  you 
not  think,  Edmund,  you  could  make  it  only  two  ?  " 

"  What  do  you  mean  ?  "  said  Broke,  with  a  harsh  change 
in  his  voice. 


392  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  Will  you  not  go  to  the  cottage  and  see  that  poor  lonely 
child?  It  might  make  things  easier  for  her;  and  I  am 
sure,  Edmund,  it  would  for  us." 

Brokers  face  had  altered  completely. 

"  When  will  you  learn  to  understand  that  if  certain 
books  are  closed  they  cannot  be  opened  again  ?  " 

"Never,  Edmund." 

"  Why  this — ah — morbid  craving  to  reopen  old 
wounds  ?  " 

"  It  is  by  that  means,  Edmund,  and  that  means  only, 
that  we  shall  be  brought  to  recognize  the  blindness  and 
futility  of  our  acts." 

"  Good  night.     I  am  going  to  bed." 

Broke  rose  from  his  chair  as  abruptly  as  he  spoke,  and 
walked  out  of  the  room. 


CHAPTER  XL 

IN   WHICH    MR.   BREFFIT  THE   ELDER   WRITES   OFF   ANOTHER! 
LITTLE   ITEM    OF   HIS   ACCOUNT 

A  FEW  days  afterwards  there  came  a  painful  piece  of 
news.  Old  Mr.  Breffit  had  fallen  downstairs  and 
broken  his  neck.  Broke  and  his  wife  were  greatly- 
shocked. 

"  Poor,  poor  old  man,"  said  Mrs.  Broke.  "  And  on  the 
eve,  too,  of  his  son's  marriage." 

"  There  is  a  story  attached  to  that,"  said  Broke  darkly. 
*'  Perhaps  it  is  worth  telling ;  the  moral  is  not  to  be  de- 
spised." 

Thereupon  he  gave  a  few  salient  particulars  of  his  last 
singular  interview  with  the  old  man  at  Cuttisham. 

"  I  remember  it  made  a  rather  horrible  impression  upon 
me  at  the  time.  I  believe  he  was  drinking  himself  to  death 
then.  There  was  a  great  change  in  the  poor  fellow.  I  call 
the  whole  business  as  pitiable  as  anything  I  have  ever 
known." 

"  It  is  tragedy,"  said  Mrs.  Broke.  "  Poor  unfortunate 
man,  that  he  should  spend  his  life  in  the  pursuit  of  a  thing 
that  was  so  bitterly  to  recoil  upon  him!  Fate  is  very 
cruel.     The  poor  old  man  must  be  enormously  wealthy." 

"  He  told  me  the  exact  figures,  but  I  forget  them.  By 
the  way,  he  said  one  rather  odd  thing.  He  said  he  was  at 
a  loss  to  know  what  to  do  with  the  quarter  of  a  million 
or  so  he  had  not  already  given  to  his  son.  He  assumed 
that  he  would  have  to  bestow  it  on  deserving  charities  as 
he  had  no  other  kin.  And  then  I  remember  the  old  fel- 
low said  suddenly,  in  a  very  odd  queer  way,  '  I  wish  you 
were  not  so  proud,  Mr.  Broke.'  At  the  time  I  did  not 
take  his  meaning,  but  it  struck  me  afterwards  that  he  may 
have  looked  on  me  as  a  deserving  charity  also." 

393 


394  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  Perhaps  he  did,  Edmund." 

"  He  may.     Even  at  that  time  he  was  rather  far  gone." 

"  Had  this  hypothesis  occurred  to  you  sooner  how  would 
you  have  answered  him  ?  " 

"  Well,  I  suppose  one  would  have  been  forced  to  laugh 
at  the  maudlin  old  fellow,  although  one  would  not  have 
liked  to  have  given  him  pain.  I  never  saw  a  man  change 
so  much  in  so  short  a  time." 

This  chance  phrase  of  Mr.  Breffit's  and  the  hebetude 
of  her  husband  in  regard  to  it  was  a  source  of  unhappi- 
ness  to  Mrs.  Broke.  In  her  own  mind  she  heightened  its 
significance  until  it  shone  forth  as  a  deliberate  renuncia- 
tion of  a  sum  of  money  that  would  have  set  them  on  their 
legs  again.  Strictly  speaking,  it  was  nothing  of  the  kind ; 
but  so  prone  are  our  minds  to  magnify  the  might-have-been 
that  a  fact  trivial  in  itself  assumed  great  proportions. 

There  was  another  aspect  to  the  case  that  had  better 
reason  for  causing  her  distress.  The  sum  of  two  thousand 
pounds  she  had  borrowed  from  Mr,  Breffit  would  be  de- 
manded more  peremptorily  by  the  executors  of  his  estate 
than  by  the  old  man  himself. 

"  I  don't  know  what  we  shall  do  when  they  come  down 
upon  us,"  said  Mrs.  Broke.  "  If  they  were  to  distrain 
upon  our  personal  goods  I  do  not  think  they  would  make 
two  thousand  pounds.  In  any  case,  we  shall  be  obliged 
to  let  Covenden  almost  at  once." 

*'  I — ah — think  you  take  an  extreme  view,"  said  Broke, 
but  his  face  had  a  fluttered  look  of  alarm.  "  I — ah — ah — 
believe  Breffit  said  he  would  not  press  for  the  money; 
although  as  soon  as  we  get  it,  it  shall  certainly  be  repaid. 
But  I — ah — think  we  had  better  not  bother  our  heads  about 
it  just  now.  Things  have  always  sorted  themselves  out 
for  us  a  bit  in  one  way  or  another." 

"  You  remind  me,  Edmund,  of  the  statesman  who  said 
the  other  day  in  regard  to  this  hideous  mess  in  South 
Africa  that  he  supposed  we  should  *  muddle  through '  as 
we  had  so  often  done  before.  It  is  reassuring  to  find  two 
such  representative  Britons  taking  such  a  statesmanlike 
view  of  the  predicament  in  which  you  find  yourselves." 


MR.  BREFFIT  THE  ELDER  395 

*'We  must  keep  pegging  away,  anyhow,"  said  Broke. 
"  You — ah — will  find  that  things  will  :come  out  all  right  in 
the  end." 

"  Now  that  Mr.  Breffit  is  no  more  we  shall  have  to  get 
a  new  agent.  It  is  hardly  likely  that  his  son  will  carry 
on  the  business.  I  shudder  to  think  how  serious  a  matter 
it  may  prove.  Our  affairs  are  so  hopelessly  involved  that 
it  may  be  impossible  to  get  a  new  man  to  undertake  the 
responsibility.  It  is  only  now  that  Mr.  Breffit  is  gone 
that  we  shall  fully  realize  what  we  owe  him.  I  am  con- 
vinced— although  in  the  case  of  a  man  with  such  a  repu- 
tation for  hard  business  qualities  the  statement  may  seem 
absurd — that  he  has  lost  rather  than  gained  by  the  trans- 
action of  our  affairs." 

"  I  cannot  believe  that,"  said  Broke  doughtily. 

"  I  am  convinced  it  is  so,  Edmund,  of  late  years  at  least. 
We  owe  that  old  man  a  debt  of  gratitude.  I  really  believe 
that,  since  he  came  to  be  so  prosperous,  all  the  old  man  has 
done  for  us  has  been  a  labour  of  love.  Unless  his  services 
had  been  purely  disinterested  we  could  not  possibly  have 
weathered  the  storm  so  long.  I  believe,  Edmund,  that  you 
personally  were  a  sort  of  hero  to  him.  You  were  his  beau 
ideal  of  the  landed  proprietor,  the  pattern  of  what  he  could 
have  wished  to  be  himself,  had  his  lot  at  the  beginning 
been  cast  in  other  and  easier  places.  And  I  know  that 
you  and  yours  stood  for  the  model  on  which  he  tried  to 
form  his  son.     He  has  told  me  so  more  than  once." 

"  Good  God !  I — ah — hope  the  likeness  he  has — ah — 
produced  is  not  flattering." 

"  Let  us  hope  not ;  but  to  me  the  whole  thing  is  very 
touching.  We  may  smile  at  the  old  man,  but  we  could 
not  have  done  without  him  all  these  years.  And,  Edmund, 
I  am  convinced  that  the  only  thing  to  do  now  is  to  submit 
to  the  inevitable.  Covenden  must  be  given  up.  To  keep 
it  on  another  year  is  impossible.  There  is  no  quarter  now 
to  which  we  can  look  for  help  to  tide  things  over." 

These  were  bitter  and  grievous  words  to  Broke.  To  give 
up  Covenden,  the  home  from  immemorial  time  of  him  and 
his  and  all  that  he  held  dear  struck  right  at  his  heart.     He 


396  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

would  as  lief  have  given  up  life  itself.  But  he  knew  that 
his  wife  did  not  exaggerate.  Circumstances  had  forced 
him  to  recognize  that  his  affairs  were  in  a  very  dire  state. 
But  he  was  only  just  beginning  to  realize  how  hard  they 
had  been  hit  by  the  death  of  Breffit.  Here  again  his  wife 
was  to  be  trusted  implicitly.  She  was  far  better  acquainted 
with  their  complex  dealings  than  was  he.  But  the  plain 
facts  she  had  unfolded  of  the  benevolence  of  that  strange 
old  man  galled  him  bitterly.  He  was  the  last  person  in 
the  world  to  submit  to  deliberate  benefactions.  But  it 
seemed  that  the  whirlpool  of  events  in  whose  vortex  he 
had  been  caught  was  stronger,  subtler,  more  inexorable 
than  even  his  most  cherished  prejudices. 

Presently  there  came  a  day  when  the  tragic  death  of  old 
Breffit  acquired  a  new  phase  for  the  family  of  Covenden. 
The  particulars  of  it  were  embodied  in  a  small  packet 
addressed  to  Broke  from  a  firm  of  solicitors.  It  consisted 
of  two  letters :  one,  in  a  familiar  spidery  handwriting  ad- 
dressed to  Broke  himself;  the  other  in  one  more  clerky 
and  official  to  his  son  Billy.  The  former  communication 
was  as  follows : 

"  Dear  Mr.  Broke — I  have  been  thinking  a  good  deal 
during  the  last  few  days  of  the  use  to  which  I  shall  devote 
the  remainder  of  my  fortune,  hoping  and  trusting  as  I  do 
that  my  end  is  now  very  near.  And  it  has  seemed  to  me 
better  to  place  it  at  the  disposal  of  one  in  whom  I  have 
taken  a  deep  interest,  rather  than  at  the  disposal  of  a 
charitable  institution  of  which  I  should  know  little.  To 
that  end  I  have  caused  my  will  to  be  altered  in  the  favour 
of  your  son,  Mr.  William.  He  may,  of  course,  not  choose 
to  make  use  of  my  money;  but  if  the  assurance  is  likely 
to  carry  any  weight,  I  should  like  it  to  be  made  to  him  that 
his  acceptance  of  the  remainder  of  my  considerable  fortune 
will  confer  an  obligation  on  one  who  is  old  and  unhappy. 
I  shall  then  be  able  to  feel  that  after  all  my  money  is  doing 
some  real  good  to  somebody  in  the  world,  to  somebody 
in  whom  I  hope  it  is  not  presumptuous  to  say  I  have  long 
taken  a  deep  interest.     I  may  add  the  gross  value  of  the 


MR.  BREFFIT  THE  ELDER  397 

estate  which  I  wish  to  be  allowed  to  make  over  to  your 
son  is  some  two  hundred  and  seventy  thousand  pounds, 
as  nearly  as  I  can  approximate,  less  death  duties  and 
various  small  legacies  to  servants,  and  fees  and  expenses 
of  executors.  I  remain,  dear  Mr.  Broke,  always  yours 
truly, 

"Joseph  Breffit." 

Broke's  meditations  on  this  remarkable  document  were 
long  and  deep.  At  last  he  was  so  far  able  to  detach  him- 
self from  them  as  to  take  his  wife  into  his  confidence.  He 
gave  her  the  letter.     She  read  it  with  a  reeling  brain. 

"  It  is  impossible  at  first  to  understand  all  that  it  means," 
she  said  in  a  feeble  voice.  "  One  has  to  read  it  over  and 
over  before  one  can  realize  it." 

"  I — ah — do  not  see  that  it  means  anything." 

"  It  assures  the  future  of  Billy." 

The  muscles  of  Broke's  face  were  under  such  control 
that  it  remained  a  mask. 

"  It  therefore  assures  the  future  of  us  all." 

In  the  rush  of  feeling  the  letter  provoked  Mrs.  Broke 
could  not  repress  a  certain  excitement. 

"  It — ah — does  nothing  of  the  kind,"  said  Broke. 

"  Surely,  Edmund,  a  stroke  of  providence  of  this  be- 
wildering nature  will  cause  you  to  reconsider  the  position 
lyou  have  taken  up.  Surely  a  thing  that  means  so  much 
to  us  all  will  help  you  to  forget." 

"  I — ah — fail  to  see  that  the  case  is  altered  in  any  way. 
I — ah — cannot  discuss  it." 

"  Are  there  no  limits  to  your  unreason,  Edmund  ?  Is  it 
possible  you  are  still  blind  to  the  fate  that  threatens  to 
overwhelm  you?  Is  it  possible  you  do  not  understand 
what  this  bequest  means  to  you  personally?  If  you  per- 
sist in  this  attitude  you  will  be  guilty  not  only  of  a  crime 
against  yourself,  but  against  that  which  you  value  more." 

The  only  reply  Broke  made  to  these  words  was  to  walk 
out  of  the  room. 

All  the  same,  wrought  upon  greatly  by  this  extraordi- 
nary stroke  of  fortune,  Mrs.  Broke  could  not  forbear  to 


398  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

rejoice.  For  the  time  being  she  declined  to  look  at  the 
dark  side  of  the  picture  as  represented  by  Broke's  atti- 
tude. It  was  enough  that  the  sordid  exigencies  of  the 
moment,  the  eternal  need  of  mere  pence,  were  once  for 
all  allayed.  And  what  a  door  was  opened  for  reconcilia- 
tion !  In  the  first  flush  of  her  gratitude  to  an  inscrutable 
providence  she  allowed  herself  to  foresee  that  as  soon  as 
Broke  was  obliged  to  give  his  sanction  to  one  of  their 
children,  he  would  be  forced  to  give  it  to  the  other. 

Under  the  spur  of  her  excitement,  Mrs.  Broke  lost  no 
time  in  going  to  the  cottage  to  tell  the  wonderful  news. 
But  even  as  she  entered  it  she  was  conscious  that  the 
atmosphere  in  which  the  place  was  enveloped  was  in 
strange  contrast  to  the  joy  in  her  own  heart.  There  was 
a  pall  of  desolation  upon  it.  The  light  had  gone  out  of 
the  lives  of  the  two  lonely  women.  Their  brief  happiness 
had  perished  all  too  soon.  In  spite  of  the  pure  country 
air  the  young  wife  seemed  to  grow  every  day  more  fragile. 

When  Mrs.  Broke  came  to  the  cottage  that  memorable 
morning  of  November,  and  opened  the  door,  aunt  and 
niece  were  seated  at  a  table  before  a  bright  fire.  They 
were  reading  a  letter  that  had  arrived  recently  from  South 
Africa,  although  both  could  have  repeated  every  word  of 
it  by  heart  already.  Upon  the  entrance  of  their  good 
friend  they  rose  immediately.  Mrs.  Broke  kissed  her 
daughter-in-law  with  much  tenderness. 

"  I  have  brought  great  news  for  you,  my  dear  child — oh, 
so  great ! " 

"  I — I  think  we  know  it,  ma'am,  already,"  said  Miss 
Sparrow,  with  a  kind  of  triumph  in  her  timid  voice. 

"  Surely  not,  my  dear  Miss  Sparrow.  The  lawyers 
could  hardly  have  written  to  you,  as  they  do  not  know 
your  address.  Still,  they  may  have  found  it  out ;  lawyers 
are  so  clever." 

"  Oh,  no,  ma'am,  not  the  lawyers.  Mr.  William  wrote 
to  us  himself." 

"  But  surely,  my  dear  Miss  Sparrow,  he  can  hardly 
know  of  it  yet." 

"  Oh,  yes,  ma'am,  here  it  is  written  in  his  own  hand- 


MR.  BREFFIT  THE  ELDER  399 

writing.  Is  not  this  the  great  news  that  you  mean,  ma'am  ? 
Promotion  has  come  to  him  very  quickly,  has  it  not?  con- 
sidering it  is  only  about  a  month  since  he  rejoined  the 
army  as  a  private  soldier.  But  they  are  very  quick  in 
the  army.  They  soon  find  out  what  a  man  is  worth,  as 
I  have  heard  my  Uncle  Edward  say." 

In  proud  confirmation  of  this  fact  the  old  woman  placed 
Billy's  letter  in  the  hands  of  his  mother.  She  indicated 
the  all-important  passage  with  her  finger.  It  ran :  "  I 
am  now  a  full-blown  sergeant  in  the  Rhodesian  Light 
Horse.  It  is  not  so  bad,  is  it  ?  seeing  that  I  was  a  trooper 
for  only  about  nine  days.  If  I  go  on  at  this  rate  I  shall 
be  commanding  a  brigade  in  about  a  year ! " 

"  The  news  I  have  brought  you  is  better  even  than 
that,"  said  Mrs.  Broke. 

Aunt  and  niece  looked  at  her  in  bewilderment.  She 
allowed  them  to  enjoy  the  delicious  thrill  of  expectation. 

"  You  don't  mean  to  say,  ma'am,  they  have  made  him  a 
troop  sergeant-major  already,"  said  the  excited  Miss  Spar- 
row. "  Because  if  they  have,  ma'am,  I  call  it  wonderful. 
My  Uncle  Edward  came  to  be  a  troop  sergeant-major  in 
the  Ninth  Hussars,  but  it  took  him  years  and  years.  It 
is  very  wonderful  if  they  have,  ma'am,  although  Mr.  Wil- 
liam is  such  a  wonderful  young  gentleman." 

"  No,  my  dear  Miss  Sparrow,  it  is  something  even  better. 
A  letter  came  this  morning  to  tell  us  that  he  had  come  into 
a  great  fortune,  quite  unexpectedly.  There  is  nb  reason 
now  for  him  to  stay  away  from  you  another  day.  What 
do  you  say  to  that  ?     Is  not  the  news  glorious  ?  " 

The  old  woman  began  to  weep  softly,  which  is,  perhaps, 
the  only  true  method  of  expressing  feminine  joy.  In  the 
bright  eyes  of  the  girl  was  a  hungry  radiance.  But  the 
pale  lips  were  compressed. 

"  Come,  my  dear  child,"  said  Mrs.  Broke,  "  I  am  sure 
this  will  make  you  happy.  Billy  will  come  back  at  once ; 
and  it  will  not  be  necessary  for  you  ever  to  part  again 
from  one  another." 

"  He  will  never  come  back,"  said  the  young  wife,  with 
a  desolate  quietude. 


400  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  That  is  very  wrong,  my  dear  child.  We  cannot  have 
you  talk  so.  You  are  a  little  depressed ;  you  must  keep  up 
your  courage.  I  hope  you  have  drunk  all  the  port  wine 
I  sent  you.     Some  more  is  coming  to-day." 

The  fragile  thing  shook  her  head. 

"  What  can  have  put  these  unhappy  thoughts  into  your 
head,  I  wonder  ?  You  must  not  give  way  to  these  fancies, 
particularly  at  a  time  like  this,  when  you  need  all  your 
strength." 

Again  the  young  wife  shook  her  head.  She  pressed  a 
thin  hand  to  her  bosom. 

"  I  have  something  here  in  my  heart,"  she  said,  "  that 
tells  me  he  will  never  return.  As  soon  as  this  terrible 
war  broke  out  I  saw  clearly  in  what  way  God  intended  to 
punish  me." 

"  But  why  should  He  punish  you,  my  poor  child  ?  " 

"  Because  I  have  been  so  wicked ;  because  in  trying  to 
gain  my  own  happiness  I  have  marred  that  of  others — of 
others  who  are  so  much  better  and  nobler  in  every  way 
than  I  am  myself." 

"  Who  has  put  these  foolish  and  cruel  fancies  into  your 
mind,  my  dear  one  ?    What  mischievous  nonsense  is  this  ?  " 

"  They  have  all  come  there  out  of  my  own  thoughts. 
I  was  blind  at  first,  blind  with  love ;  but  my  eyes  are  open 
now  and  I  can  see.     I  have  ruined  my  husband." 

"  Your  husband  is  anything  but  ruined.  He  is  now  a 
very  rich  man  indeed ;  and  I  am  going  to  write  to  him  now, 
from  his  own  home,  to  tell  him  of  his  wonderful  good 
luck,  to  tell  him  the  condition  of  his  wife,  and  that  his 
affairs  require  his  immediate  presence  in  England.  Can 
you  find  me  a  pen  and  ink,  and  writing-paper  and  an 
envelope.  Miss  Sparrow  ?  You  can  then  see  exactly  what 
I  write." 

With  a  finely  feminine  disregard  of  the  circumstances  in 
which  Billy  was  at  that  moment  placed,  Mrs.  Broke  wrote 
her  letter.  Her  commands  were  very  peremptory.  His 
absence  was  breaking  the  heart  of  his  wife,  who  had  the 
sorest  need  of  him.  She  informed  him  that  a  sum  of  two 
hundred  and  seventy  thousand  pounds  had  come  to  him 


MR.  BREFFIT  THE  ELDER  401 

from  a  wholly  unexpected  quarter.  She  omitted,  however, 
to  state  the  source  whence  it  came.  When  she  had  writ- 
ten her  letter  she  read  it  aloud.  She  was  very  anxious  to 
impress  the  minds  of  the  two  women  with  the  fact  that 
this  rare  piece  of  good  fortune  had  actually  come  to  pass, 
and  that  their  days  of  repining  would  soon  be  at  an  end. 
"  There,  my  dear  child,  you  can  read  it  for  yourself. 
You  shall  stamp  the  envelope.  And  for  his  sake  and  that 
of  another  you  must  try  to  be  happy  and  of  good  faith 
until  he  comes  again  into  this  little  room.  It  means  but 
a  short  week  or  two  of  waiting." 
Alice  shook  her  head. 

"  God  will  know  how  to  punish  me,"  she  said. 
In  spite  of  her  resolute  will  Mrs.  Broke  was  oppressed. 
The  tragic  gloom  in  the  girl's  mind  haunted  her  so  much 
that  even  the  new  hope  born  of  that  day's  news  was  over- 
thrown. It  had  seemed  as  though  at  last  their  luck  had 
begun  to  turn.  But  the  mood  in  which  she  had  found 
Alice  had  done  much  to  dispel  the  illusion.  There  was  an 
air  of  finality  with  which  she  predicted  the  event  she  fore- 
saw as  though  it  had  already  come  to  be. 

Indeed,  with  Alice  the  happy  circumstance  that  had 
brought  Mrs.  Broke  to  the  cottage  did  not  weigh  at  all. 
The  outbreak  of  war  in  South  Africa,  coming  at  such  a 
moment  in  her  life,  dominated  her  with  the  sense  of  its 
inexorable  purpose.  Her  obsession  was  such  that  it 
seemed  to  her  that  millions  of  people  had  been  plunged 
into  anguish  that  one  erring,  obscure  soul  in  a  remote 
country  place  might  be  visited  with  the  implacable  justice 
of  heaven. 

During  that  humiliating  week  in  December  in  which 
misfortune  was  heaped  upon  misfortune's  head,  there  was 
only  one  matter  for  men's  minds,  only  one  topic  for  their 
lips. 

Mrs.  Broke  was  much  too  adroit  to  pe^rmit  a  state  of 
things  that  had  welded  all  sects  and  classes  of  the  com- 
munity into  a  common  bond  of  feeling  to  pass  without 
trying  to  turn  it  to  account.  One  evening  she  said  to  her 
husband : 


402  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  There  is  one  circumstance,  Edmund,  which  I  feel  you 
ought  to  know.     Billy  is  at  the  Front." 

Broke  had  the  lethargy  of  many  generations  in  him,  but 
he  seemed  to  feel  the  shock  of  the  announcement.  In  a 
momentary  spasm  of  bewilderment  he  held  up  his  hand 
to  stay  the  words  of  his  wife. 

"  It  is  useless,  Edmund.  He  is  our  boy,  and  you  shall 
hear." 

She  moved  between  him  and  the  door. 

"  No,  no,  no,"  he  said  in  a  hollow  tone. 

The  note  of  weary  impotence  was  rather  piteous.  Mrs. 
Broke,  far  from  being  melted  by  it,  grew  more  inexorable. 
Her  shaft  was  going  home. 

"  He  enlisted  as  a  trooper  in  the  Rhodesian  Light  Horse. 
He  has  been  promoted  already  to  the  rank  of  sergeant." 

"  Well  ?  "  gasped  Broke  involuntarily,  in  spite  of  him- 
self. 

"Well?" 

They  found  themselves  standing  face  to  face,  looking 
into  the  eyes  of  one  another.  The  close  lips  of  the  one, 
and  the  hard,  short  breathing  and  the  convulsive  breast  of 
the  other,  who  was  the  woman,  told  a  tale. 

"  He  is  our  boy,"  she  said  defiantly. 

Broke  turned  his  back. 

"  Our  boy,  Edmund." 

He  walked  away  from  her  to  the  farthest  end  of  the 
large  room.  She  followed  him  up  and  took  him  by  the 
sleeve  of  his  coat.  The  courage  she  had  received  from 
his  momentary  confession  of  weakness  was  still  in  her. 

"  Edmund,  I  insist  that  you  hear  what  I  say.  He  is 
serving  his  country  in  the  way  of  his  race  these  many 
hundreds  of  years.  It  is  your  duty  as  an  Englishman  not 
to  overlook  that." 

Long  ago  she  had  surrendered  the  time-honoured  role 
of  austere  woman  of  the  world.  Iji  a  speech  of  this  kind 
the  urbane  reserves  of  a  high  priestess  of  that  cult  were 
far  to  seek.  There  was  still,  however,  enough  of  sensi- 
tiveness in  her  to  make  her  wince  at  the  thought  that  she 


MR.  BREFFIT  THE  ELDER  403 

was  grovelling  before  a  Juggernaut  whose  wheels  were 
passing  and  repassing  over  her  heart. 

"  He  is  expiating  his  offence,  Edmund,  in  the  service 
of  his  country." 

Broke  did  not  look  at  her,  nor  did  he  speak.  She  had 
hit  him  hard,  but  he  was  too  dogged  a  fighter  to  let  her 
know  it.  The  satisfaction  was  hers,  however,  of  noting 
that  if  there  was  an  arid  vacancy  in  his  face,  there  was  a 
haggard  weariness  in  his  eyes. 


CHAPTER  XLI 

BARBED   WIRE 

THAT  was  not  a  fortunate  Christmas  for  the  family 
of  Covenden.  On  the  eve  of  that  festival  occurred 
one  of  those  incidents  that  do  so  much  to  irreconcile  us  to 
the  conditions  of  tenure  of  our  mortal  lot.  Wanton  acci- 
dents occur  sometimes  in  the  well-ordered  scheme  of  life, 
for  no  better  purpose,  as  far  as  our  limited  vision  will 
allow  us  to  judge,  than  the  destruction  of  any  theories  we 
may  have  formed  concerning  it. 

The  previous  night  and  the  early  morning  of  the  hal- 
lowed twenty- fourth  of  December  had  had  a  fog  and  a 
white  frost.  About  ten  o'clock,  however,  the  fog  lifted, 
and  the  sun  made  a  gracious  appearance.  With  it  came 
Lord  Bosket  in  great  heart,  fully  equipped  for  the  chase. 

"  Marvellous  climate !  Two  hours  ago  I  would  have 
laid  a  thousand  to  five  there  would  ha'  been  no  meet  this 
mornin'.  But  you  never  know  your  luck.  The  frost  is 
givin'  everywhere,  and  we  shall  be  as  right  as  rain  by  the 
time  we  are  ready  for  a  move.  But  I  see  you  little  fillies 
had  more  faith  than  I  had.  You  are  all  ready  to  start, 
and  Edmund  too." 

"  Father  predicted  it  last  night,  Uncle  Charles,"  said 
Joan  with  her  inveterate  pride  in  the  judgment  of  that 
omniscient  person.  ''  About  nine  o'clock  he  looked  out, 
and  just  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  moon  up  the  valley,  and 
he  said  it  would  be  all  right  for  this  morning." 

Lord  Bosket  drained  his  glass  with  an  immense  satis- 
faction. 

"  Wonderful  eye  you've  got  for  the  weather,  Edmund. 
It's  a  gift.     I  can  never  read  the  signs  like  that,  although 

404 


BARBED  WIRE  405 

I  have  lived  in  the  country  all  my  life.  I  believe  these 
little  gals  have  got  it  too.  It's  a  gift,  just  the  same  as  an 
eye  for  the  work  of  hounds  and  the  lie  of  a  country.  I 
believe  any  one  of  you  little  gals  would  hunt  the  pack 
better  than  I  could  myself." 

"  Oh,  no,  Uncle  Charles,"  they  cried  in  a  flattered  and 
delighted  chorus.     "  That  would  be  impossible." 

"  But  you'd  hunt  it  as  well,  what  ?  " 

"  We  are  quite  sure  we  could  not.  Uncle  Charles." 

"  I  am  blowed  if  I  am,"  said  their  uncle  proudly. 
"  There  is  not  a  hound  in  the  pack  whose  note  you  don't 
know  half  a  mile  off,  and  that  you  don't  know  what  he 
can  do  better  than  I  can.  Why,  if  they  were  mute,  and 
you  were  in  blinkers,  I'd  lay  a  thousand  to  five  you'd  tell 
every  one  of  'em  by  the  patter  of  their  feet." 

"  I  believe  they  would,  Charles,"  said  their  father,  with 
an  approach  to  his  old  indulgent  laugh. 

Sometimes  their  father  and  their  uncle  were  a  little 
fulsome,  perhaps.  They  were  just  the  type  to  appeal  to 
such  a  pair  of  sportsmen.  Their  form,  their  knowledge, 
their  total  surrender  to  the  all-absorbing  business  of  the 
chase  had  conquered  even  the  higher  criticism,  which  in 
the  hunting-field  is  not  always  kind  to  their  sex.  They 
rode  to  hunt ;  they  did  not  hunt  to  ride.  Their  apprecia- 
tion of  the  points  of  the  longest  and  most  trying  run  would 
have  done  no  discredit  to  the  cleverest  huntsman  who  ever 
carried  the  horn.  They  did  not  ride  to  hounds  for  the 
purpose  of  showing  off  the  weaknesses  of  human  nature. 
They  were  as  full  of  tradition  as  the  name  they  carried. 
They  had  the  hereditary  knack,  improved  to  perfection — 
and  in  the  hunting  field  there  is  such  a  thing  as  perfection 
— ^by  loving,  ever-vigilant  tutelage,  and  an  infinite  capacity 
for  taking  pains. 

The  result  was  the  grand  manner.  Just  as  any  art 
conceived  under  certain  skyey  influences  and  reared  under 
special  conditions  may  attain  to  a  noble  simplicity,  the 
style  of  these  sportswomen  at  the  covert  side  had  a  similar 
significance.  Art  concealed  art  in  their  case.  There,  as 
always  in  their  daily  lives,  they  were  perfectly  quiet  and 


4o6  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

self-effacing,  but  the  qualities  that  lay  beneath  that  un- 
emotional exterior  came  out  in  a  manner  that  you  would 
not  have  thought  to  be  possible  in  such  commonplace  crea- 
tures. They  made  the  business  of  hunting  the  fox  look 
such  a  simple  affair  there  were  those  who  attributed  their 
knack  of  living  with  hounds  to  luck  quite  as  much  as  to 
judgment.  Many  persons  could  be  cited  in  support  of  this 
theory,  persons  who  had  more  dash,  more  horses  and  bet- 
ter, in  fact  more  of  everything,  including  a  visible  deter- 
mination to  shine,  who  had  served  a  long  apprenticeship 
to  this  particular  country,  which  was  as  big  as  any  to  be 
found  in  the  Shires.  But  at  the  same  time  it  was  idle  for 
any  of  these  performers  to  pretend  that  they  claimed  equal 
rank  with  these  unprepossessing  young  women. 

"  Fact  is,  Broke,  they  are  classics,  and  that's  all  there  is 
to  be  said,"  was  the  verdict  of  a  certain  hard-riding  old 
warrior  who  had  broken  more  bones  in  the  service  of  Diana 
than  he  had  in  the  service  of  his  country.  Small  wonder 
it  was  that  their  proficiency  was  a  source  of  delight  to  their 
father  and  their  Uncle  Charles.  And  to  Broke  at  least  it 
provided  an  argument  in  support  of  his  favourite  dogma. 
"  I  should  like  to  see  the  daughters  of  your  mushroom 
people  with  their  eye  for  a  country  '*  was  a  speech  that 
had  fallen  from  his  lips.  And  often  enough,  when  riding 
home  in  the  company  of  his  brother-in-law  in  the  sore 
satisfaction  of  a  hard  day,  had  he  said :  "  What  hands 
they've  got,  Charles.  They  make  you  feel  like  a  bear 
performing  on  horseback  in  a  circus." 

"  Damn  it,  they'd  take  a  donkey  over  Leicestershire," 
their  uncle  would  reply. 

It  may  have  been  the  approach  of  Christmas  which 
made  them  once  again,  for  one  brief  hour,  so  buoyant  of 
spirit  and  so  full  of  pleasant  anticipation.  As  they  pre- 
pared to  set  forth  that  morning  it  was  almost  like  old 
times.  Thus  far  the  winter  months  had  been  shorn  of 
their  glamour  by  the  pangs  of  bereavement;  and  by  the 
too-evident  change  that  was  taking  place  in  their  father, 
that  first  of  friends  and  comrades.  But  this  raw  morn- 
ing, softened  a  little  by  the  tardy  arrival  of  the  sun,  the 


BARBED  WIRE  407 

gloom  was  lifted  for  the  time  being  from  their  hearts. 
Even  their  father  seemed  a  little  more  cheerful.  Their 
laughter  was  heard  again  for  this  one  brief  instant,  their 
eyes  were  seen  to  sparkle  to  their  uncle's  praises;  and 
presently  they  sallied  forth  the  four  of  them  who  now 
remained,  in  the  company  of  their  proud  and  indulgent 
guardians,  to  meet  Trotman  with  the  hounds. 

Even  their  mother,  who  as  a  rule  took  so  perfunctory 
an  interest  in  their  doings,  observed  this  manner  of  their 
setting  out,  so  sharply  did  it  contrast  with  the  gloomy 
quietude  that  had  accompanied  them  all  the  winter.  Per- 
haps their  mother  cherished  the  hope  that  this  might  be 
something  in  the  nature  of  a  reversion  to  the  old  order 
of  things,  when  their  spirits  were  invariably  high  and 
their  laughter  infectious.  It  might  be  that,  in  the  elastic 
fashion  of  youth,  they  were  recovering  from  the  tragic 
loss  of  Billy  and  Delia  and  the  marriage  of  Harriet,  which 
all  that  season  had  weighed  upon  them  so  heavily. 

Strong  in  this  thought,  she  went  to  her  sitting-room 
and  surrendered  herself  to  a  stern  conflict  with  Christmas 
bills.  The  unequal  battle  she  had  waged  so  long  with  im- 
portunate tradesmen  still  went  on ;  and  grew  more  unequal 
as  it  proceeded.  Whatever  the  resources  of  her  diplomacy, 
many  of  them  now  declined  longer  to  be  put  off.  For 
years  had  they  been  met  with  an  indomitable  tact,  but  the 
accumulation  of  unpaid  bills  that  this  morning  she  was 
called  upon  to  survey  filled  her  with  a  sense  of  the  im- 
potence of  her  struggles. 

There  was  still,  however,  one  asset  remaining:  the  for- 
tune that  had  come  in  such  a  providential  fashion  to  Billy. 
She  felt  sure  she  could  count  on  his  help.  At  the  last 
interview  she  had  had  with  him  at  the  cottage,  just  before 
he  had  sailed  for  South  Africa,  he  had  expressed  his  deep 
gratitude  to  her  for  all  she  had  done  for  his  wife.  Even 
as  she  recalled  this  fact  she  was  stung  by  the  sordid  na- 
ture of  her  thoughts,  which  in  turn  shaped  themselves  into 
the  reflection  that  poverty  is  a  sordid  and  debasing  thing. 
But,  after  all,  she  could  hardly  be  said  to  be  acting  for  her- 
self.    Were  not  her  efforts  in  the  interest  of  her  small 


4o8  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

community,  and  therefore  on  behalf  of  Billy  himself? 
Thus  at  that  moment,  under  the  goad  of  a  humiliating 
need,  she  supplemented  the  letter  she  had  recently  written 
to  her  son  in  the  name  of  his  wife,  with  a  personal  appeal 
on  behalf  of  the  family  of  Covenden.  If  he  did  not  re- 
turn at  once  or  send  his  power  of  attorney,  the  old  place 
which  was  so  dear  to  them  all  might  be  sold  over  their 
heads. 

The  writing  of  this  letter  gave  her  great  pain.  She  was 
possessed  by  a  sense  of  the  remorseless  nature  of  Broke's 
resentment  against  his  son,  of  his  resentment,  moreover, 
of  the  miraculous  source  whence  his  new-found  wealth  had 
sprung.  She  felt  the  whole  matter  to  be  humiliating  and 
ironical.  Therefore  she  wrote  with  a  hurried  copiousness 
that  sprang  first-hand  from  a  sense  of  shame ;  and  hastily 
sealed  the  letter  without  venturing  to  read  a  line  she  had 
written. 

In  the  afternoon  she  turned  again  to  the  disentanglement 
of  their  aflFairs.  She  scrutinized  accounts,  examined  bank- 
books, and  summed  up  in  the  explicit  value  of  pounds, 
shillings  and  pence  all  their  sources  of  revenue.  Unlet 
farms  and  agricultural  depreciation  told  too  sad  a  tale. 
Without  the  assistance  of  poor  old  Mr.  Breffit,  one  of  the 
queerest  gods  that  ever  came  out  of  any  machine,  the 
tottering  edifice  that  so  long  had  braved  the  trend  of  things 
must  years  ago  have  fallen  down. 

She  was  still  poring  over  these  documents  in  the  last 
hour  that  remained  of  the  grey  winter  daylight,  when  she 
was  startled  by  the  sound  of  a  horse  galloping  along  the 
carriage  drive.  Almost  immediately  she  caught  a  glimpse 
of  a  horseman  flying  past  the  window  of  the  room  in 
which  she  sat.  A  little  disconcerted  by  an  incident  which 
struck  her  as  decidedly  unusual,  she  waited  rather  un- 
easily for  its  development.  In  her  practical  mind  there 
was  no  effect,  however  odd,  that  had  not  an  intimate  rela- 
tion to  cause.  Therefore  she  had  already  anticipated  the 
appearance  of  the  butler  when  he  came  to  her  a  minute 
later. 

"Whatisit,  Porson?" 


BARBED  WIRE  409 

There  was  a  keen  anxiety  in  her  tone. 

**  One  of  the  second  horsemen  is  here  and  wishes  to  see 
you,  ma'am.     I — I  think  something  has  happened." 

"  I  will  see  him.     Will  you  please  bring  a  light  ?  " 

By  the  time  Porson  had  reappeared  with  a  lamp  and 
the  room  had  been  invaded  by  a  breathless,  overheated 
and  muddy  presence,  Mrs.  Broke  had  a  clear  prevision 
of  the  worst,  and  was  prepared  to  support  a  recital  of  it. 

"  I  hope  it  is  not  a  fatal  accident." 

Her  calm  tone  surprised  the  bearer  of  the  news.  That 
distressed  rustic  had  ridden  in  a  fever  of  anxiety,  and  all 
the  way  had  he  laboured  under  the  weight  of  his  instruc- 
tions. He  was  to  go  as  fast  as  he  could,  yet  at  the  same 
time  he  was  to  break,  as  far  as  possible,  the  tidings  of 
misfortune  to  Mrs.  Broke.  He  had  not  revealed  a  word 
of  his  errand  as  yet,  but  it  would  seem  that  already  she 
knew  what  it  was. 

"  No,  ma'am,  not  fatal  as  yet." 

"  Which  ?  "  she  asked,  numbed  as  by  a  blcfw. 

"  Can't  say,  ma'am ;  they're  all  alike  as  peas ;  can't  tell 
t'other  from  which.  But  it  is  one  of  the  Miss  Brokes, 
ma'am;  although  Dr.  Walker  says  you  are  not  to  be 
alarmed.  But  you  was  to  have  a  bed  made  up  in  the 
lib'ry  at  once,  although  you  was  to  be  sure  not  to  be 
alarmed.     They'll  be  here  in  a  bit." 

Without  waiting  to  hear  further  details  Mrs.  Broke  rang 
for  the  housekeeper. 

"  If  you  have  any  of  those  small  hospital  beds  in  the 
house,  Mrs.  Smith,"  she  said,  "  let  one  be  brought  down. 
If  you  have  not,  please  improvise  one  with  mattresses 
near  the  fire." 

"How  far  have  they  to  come?"  she  then  asked  the 
bearer  of  the  news.     "  Do  you  think  they  will  be  long?  " 

"  Well,  ma'am,  they've  got  a  good  three  mile.  It  hap- 
pened yon  side  Raisby.  And  they'll  be  slow,  I  reckon,  as 
they  are  having  to  carry  her." 

"  Is  she  unconscious  ?  " 

"  Oh,  yes,  ma'am." 

The  composure  of  Mrs.  Broke  seemed  slightly  inhuman 


410  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

by  comparison  with  the  agitation  of  the  bearer  of  the 
tidings. 

"  Do  you  know  how  it  happened  ?  " 

"  Barbed  wire,  ma'am.  Dr.  Walker  says  it's  murder. 
The  pore  boss  come  down  and  broke  'is  back,  and  they 
do  say,  ma'am,  the  pore  young  lady  was  pitched  on  her 
head,  and  the  pore  boss  afterwards  rolled  ov-ver  her.  I 
didn't  see  it  myself,  but  that's  how  it  happened,  so  they 
say.  It  was  the  end  of  a  hard  day,  you  see,  ma'am,  and 
I  daresay  the  pore  boss  would  be  tiring  a  bit,  and  was 
not  able  to  allow  enough.  But  Dr.  Walker  says  it's  mur- 
der, ma'am,  and  beggin'  pardon,  so  it  is.  His  lordship's 
about  out  of  his  mind."  ' 

The  grim  anticipations  in  the  heart  of  the  mother  had 
been  borne  out  by  this  grisly  narrative.  Presently  she 
went  to  superintend  the  arrangements  that  were  being 
made  in  the  library,  but  in  her  heart  there  was  no  hope. 
She  still  had  resolution  enough  to  set  herself  stedfastly 
to  the  purpose  in  hand,  even  if  for  the  moment  the  spirit 
seemed  hardly  capable  of  sustaining  its  burden.  A  sure 
instinct,  as  powerful  as  the  tide  of  events  that  was  crush- 
ing her  and  hers  to  the  dust  led  her  to  expect  the  worst. 
There  was  no  reason  to  believe  that  the  fate  which  had 
dogged  their  steps  for  twelve  months  past  would  relent 
in  such  an  hour  as  this. 

The  library  was  soon  set  in  readiness,  and  afterwards 
there  was  nothing  for  the  shattered  woman  but  to  await. 

"  Do  you  know  which  it  is,  ma'am  ?  "  said  the  house- 
keeper. 

"  I  do  not." 

"  I  expect  it  will  be  Miss  Joan." 

"  Why,  Mrs.  Smith,  do  you  think  that?  " 

"  If  you  happen  to  think  the  least  little  bit  more  of  one 
than  you  do  of  another,  that  is  the  one  that  is  sure  to  be 
taken." 

"  That  is  rather  an  uncomfortable  theory,  Mrs.  Smith." 

"  Yes,  ma'am,  I  daresay.  But  I  could  never  see  why  a 
thing  that  takes  root  in  your  heart  should  be  plucked  out 
again.     I  suppose  it  is  the  self-indulgence." 


BARBED  WIRE  411 

"  An  uncomfortable  philosophy,  Mrs.  Smith." 

"  Yes,  ma'am,  I  daresay.  But  your  endurance  is  not 
for  everybody.  I  hope  the  day  will  never  come,  ma'am, 
v^hen  it  will  be  broken  down." 

Mrs.  Smith,  a  discreet  and  sensible  person  as  a  rule, 
shook  her  head  in  the  manner  of  those  hard-eyed  seers 
who  look  into  the  future  by  the  light  of  the  past. 

The  period  of  waiting  was  very  trying.  By  an  exercise 
of  the  will,  Mrs.  Broke  returned  to  her  accounts,  and 
tried  to  grapple  again  with  those  daunting  documents  that 
also  told  so  hard  a  tale.  The  more  closely  they  were 
examined  the  more  clearly  did  disaster  reveal  itself.  Yes, 
ruin  was  staring  them  in  the  face.  But  even  that  had 
little  power  over  her  mind  now.  Her  labours  had  become 
perfunctory.  Every  time  the  fire  creaked  in  the  grate, 
or  the  cold  wind  swung  the  branch  of  a  tree  against  the 
window,  she  lifted  her  head  to  listen.  The  suspense  made 
her  ache. 

At  last  her  alert,  nervous  ears  caught  a  confusion  of 
noises  up  the  drive.  She  could  hear  the  slow  and  muf- 
fled sound  of  many  feet  tramping  through  the  crisp  air 
of  the  evening,  which  had  already  begun  to  freeze  again. 
She  could  also  detect  a  murmur  of  low  voices.  She  went 
back  to  the  library  to  bestow  a  final  glance  upon  the  prepa- 
rations that  had  been  made,  and  then  went  out  again  into 
the  hall,  where  the  servants,  several  of  whom  were  bearing 
lights,  had  been  already  marshalled  near  the  entrance 
doors.  The  old  butler  had  had  both  thrown  back  wide, 
and  was  standing  pale  and  white-haired  out  in  the  portico. 
The  rays  from  the  lamp  he  held  in  his  hand  made  the 
tears  look  like  quicksilver  as  they  ran  down  his  face. 

Broke,  Lord  Bosket,  Dr.  Walker,  and  three  of  the  girls 
were  the  first  of  the  mournful  procession  to  come  into 
view  round  the  ivy  that  covered  the  angle  of  the  outer  wall. 
One  of  them  was  bearing  an  old  and  battered  bowler  hat, 
with  a  broken  brim.  Mrs.  Broke  went  out  to  meet  them. 
Her  brother  was  the  first  to  pass  her. 

"Which,  Charles?" 

Lord  Bosket  hung  his  head  limply,  and  passed  swiftly 


412  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

into  the  spacious  dimness  of  the  house.  As  the  Hght  fell 
on  his  puffy  red  face  it  was  seen  to  be  in  the  same  condi- 
tion of  emotion  as  the  butler's.  She  touched  her  husband 
on  the  shoulder. 

Broke,  without  glancing  at  her,  strode  quickly  into  the 
spacious  dimness  too. 

"  It  is  Joan,  mother,"  said  Philippa  in  a  jcalm  voice. 
"  She  is  not  dead." 

"  Dead !  Oh,  dear  no,  nor  anything  like  it !  "  said  Dr. 
Walker  in  a  tone  of  rough  reassurance. 

The  red-faced  old  family  practitioner,  who  would  have 
been  the  first  to  allow  that  he  knew  far  less  about  the  pro- 
fession of  medicine  than  he  did  of  the  art  of  riding  to 
hounds,  turned  to  Mrs.  Broke  in  his  abrupt,  gruff  way 
that  yet  had  an  odd  tincture  of  kindness  in  it. 

"  Dead !  Of  course  not.  An  unlucky  Christmas  for 
you,  though.  I  hope  I  shall  not  come  across  the  man  who 
put  up  that  wire.  I  should  like  to  have  the  pleasure  of 
hanging  him." 

By  this  time  some  of  the  members  of  the  hunt  and  one 
or  two  of  the  hunt  servants  had  arrived  at  the  hall  door 
with  a  strange  burden  in  their  midst.  It  was  a  farm  gate, 
to  which  had  been  added  a  mattress  from  a  labourer's 
cottage,  and  on  the  top  of  it  was  a  scarcely  visible  some- 
thing covered  by  blankets  and  coats.  The  doctor  super- 
intended the  introduction  of  this  odd  form  of  litter  into 
the  entrance  hall.  The  hurdle  was  then  discarded,  and 
the  mattress  and  its  burden  was  jcarried  into  the  library. 
It  called  for  the  very  nicest  care  to  get  them  through  the 
various  doorways  and  past  the  many  awkward  angles, 
which  too  palpably  had  not  been  designed  for  the  recep- 
tion of  such  unwieldy  things. 

Once  inside  the  library,  the  mattress  was  lifted  bodily 
on  to  the  improvised  couch  in  front  of  the  fire  of  blazing 
logs,  and  the  wearisome  labours  of  these  friends  were  at 
an  end.  Mrs.  Broke  left  the  doctor  alone  in  the  library 
to  make  a  fuller  examination  than  he  had  been  able  to  do 
in  the  field.  In  the  most  ample  manner  did  she  keep  her 
self-control;  personally  thanked  each  of  the  bearers;  and 


BARBED  WIRE  413 

saw  to  it  that  the  anxious  friends  who  had  flocked  into  the 
house  to  get  more  definite  news  were  given  tea  and  other 
refreshment. 

When  she  returned  to  the  doctor  in  the  library  he  had 
concluded  his  further  examination,  and  was  now  seated 
at  a  table  writing  out  a  telegram. 

"  Will  you  tell  me  precisely  what  you  think?  " 

Dr.  Walker  took  a  huge  handkerchief  out  of  his  scarlet 
jcoat,  and  mopped  his  red  face  very  deliberately. 

"  Got  a  dog's  chance,"  he  said  gruffly ;  "  and  when  you've 
said  that  you've  said  all.     I  should  like  MacLachlan." 

"  By  all  means." 

"  I  am  wiring.  Better  send  somebody  with  it  to  Cuttis- 
ham — no  office  nearer.  Better  take  a  bicycle.  Every 
minute  counts." 

Mrs.  Broke  went  herself  to  execute  these  commands. 
When  she  returned  Dr.  Walker  was  standing  by  the  side 
of  the  mattress  looking  intently  at  the  form  stretched 
upon  it.  By  a  supreme  effort  she  was  able  to  go  to  his 
side.  The  coat  by  which  Joan  had  been  covered  was 
withdrawn;  and  she  lay  extended  full  length  on  the  mat- 
tress, with  her  hunting  tops  protruding  below  her  habit. 
The  grey  pallor  of  her  face  was  in  cruel  contrast  to  the 
bloom  of  ruddy  health  that  was  ever  to  be  seen  upon  it. 
The  only  relief  to  it  was  a  dark  splotch  of  blood  beside 
one  of  her  ears.  Her  eyes  were  closed,  she  was  quite  still, 
and  the  only  evidence  of  life  remaining  in  her  was  a  sound 
of  hard  breathing  that  could  be  distinctly  heard.  The 
mother  did  not  flinch,  although  in  her  veins  was  a  strange 
numbness  as  if  she  had  that  instant  suffered  the  stab  of 
a  knife. 

"  We  must  have  patience,  I  suppose ;  I  suppose  we  can 
only  wait." 

At  the  hushed  sound  of  the  familiar  tones,  it  almost 
seemed  as  if  the  closed  eyelids  lifted  a  little,  as  though 
sudden  light  had  fallen  upon  them. 

"  Can't  move  without  MacLachlan." 

"  How  long  must  we  wait  ?  " 

"If  everything  goes  right  he  might  catch  the  seven- 


414  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

twenty  from  Paddington.  He  should  be  here  in  four 
hours." 

"  Four  hours  !  " 

The  indomitable  woman  shivered  a  little. 

"  If  we  are  lucky.  If  we  are  not  lucky  he  may  not  be 
here  before  midnight  or  nine  o'clock  to-morrow  morn- 
ing." 

"  Surely  there  is  someone  else,  someone  more  certain, 
someone  nearer  at  hand !  " 

"  Not  for  this.     It  is  MacLachlan  or  nobody." 

"  He  knows  the  great  urgency  ?  " 

For  the  first  time  that  evening  the  sorely  tried  woman 
was  showing  signs  of  pressure.  They  were  slight  enough, 
but  she  had  to  make  the  effort  to  correct  them. 

"  Ha !  here's  Harris,"  said  Dr.  Walker.  "  I  sent  to 
Cuttisham  for  Harris.  He  can't  do  more  than  I've  done 
already,  but  I  thought  he  ought  to  be  here." 

The  door  of  the  hbrary  had  opened  to  admit  a  benevo- 
lent, white-headed,  bewhiskered,  heavy-watch-chained  old 
gentleman  who  bore  in  every  fold  of  his  ample  frock- 
coated  person  the  unimpeachable  evidences  of  the  family 
physician  of  great  repute.  Every  step  that  he  took  was 
accompanied  by  a  purr  and  a  creak.  His  eminence  owed 
less  in  the  local  esteem  to  his  professional  gifts  than  to 
the  perfection  of  manner  he  bore  to  the  bedside.  It  was 
partly  based  on  a  facile  sympathy,  partly  on  a  sound  work- 
ing knowledge  of  human  nature.  The  number  of  occa- 
sions on  which  his  name  had  appeared  in  the  wills  of 
deceased  old  ladies  of  the  neighbourhood  was  supposed 
to  have  long  precluded  his  practising  his  calling  as  a  means 
of  livelihood. 

He  tip-toed  across  the  carpet  and  bowed  to  Mrs.  Broke 
with  the  deferential  grace  of  a  high  priest  among  courtiers. 

"  Cchk,  cchk,"  he  said,  clicking  his  tongue  against  the 
roof  of  his  mouth,  "  Cchk,  cchk.  Walker,  what  have  we 
here?" 

"  Fractured  base,"  said  Dr.  Walker,  in  a  gruff  under- 
tone. 


BARBED  WIRE  415 

Dr.  Harris  glanced  for  a  moment  at  the  face  of  the 
loud-breathing  sufferer,  and  then,  placing  his  hands  be- 
hind him,  marched  with  his  colleague  to  the  extreme  end 
of  the  room.  For  some  time  they  stood  there  solemnly  to- 
gether.    All  that  passed  between  them  was : 

"  Wired  for  MacLachlan." 

"  Quite  right." 

There  was  nothing  left  for  them  to  do  but  await  the 
arrival  of  the  great  surgeon  from  Portland  Place.  If  she 
lived  until  that  time  something  might  be  attempted,  and 
there  was  still  that  hope  for  her.  But,  one  way  or  the 
other,  they  were  by  no  means  prepared  to  speculate  upon 
a  very  slender  chance. 

For  about  an  hour  Joan  lingered  in  a  condition  that 
might  be  called  by  the  name  of  consciousness,  and  then 
came  another  lapse  into  complete  oblivion.  Her  mother 
remained  in  the  room  with  the  two  doctors.  She  felt  the 
suspense  to  be  eating  into  her  heart  like  an  acid.  All 
depended  on  the  arrival  of  the  surgeon  from  London ;  but 
the  tardiness  of  telegraph  wires  and  railway  trains  for- 
bade his  presence  in  that  room  under  four  hours  at  the 
earliest.  The  ticking  of  the  slow  minutes  in  their  passing 
soon  became  so  intolerable  that  she  stopped  the  clock. 
She  then  turned  to  "  Bradshaw,"  the  guide,  the  solace  and 
the  despair  of  so  many  hearts  that  Christmas  Eve ;  but  no 
mitigation  was  possible  of  that  terrible  term  of  four  grim, 
tormenting  hours  at  the  earliest. 

Mrs.  Broke  began  to  chafe  at  the  inaction  of  the  two 
doctors.  It  was  as  much  as  she  could  endure  to  think  that 
Joan  lay  within  arm's  length  of  them  fighting  for  her  life, 
while  they  were  unable  to  lift  a  finger  to  help  her.  It 
might  be  going  hard  with  her  because  of  some  little  aid 
that  was  withheld.  The  torment  of  the  thought  was  very 
hard  to  bear.  The  four  hours  seemed  as  far  off  as  four 
years.  The  conviction  began  to  press  on  her  heart  that  to 
live  through  that  period  would  be  impossible  for  her,  let 
alone  for  her  eldest  daughter.  She  seemed  to  have  passed 
through  a  lifetime  already  since  the  telegram  was  sent, 


4i6  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

but  it  made  rather  less  than  forty  minutes  by  her  watch. 
More  than  three  hours  had  yet  to  pass;  and  then  it  might 
be  that  after  all  the  surgeon  would  miss  his  train.  Was  it 
too  much  to  ask  that  some  visible  effort  be  made  to  post- 
pone her  daughter's  dying  against  the  time  of  the  surgeon's 
arrival  ? 

"  Can  you  do  nothing  ?  "  she  said  at  last.  "  Surely  the 
time  is  so  long  that  she  may  die  before  the  surgeon 
comes." 

"  We  can  hope,"  said  Dr.  Walker  gruffly. 

"  For  the  best,"  chimed  Dr.  Harris,  with  a  creak  and  a 
purr. 

Dr.  Harris  stretched  his  hands  to  the  fire. 

"  Freezing  again,"  he  said. 

"  I  don't  know  about  that,"  said  Dr.  Walker.  "  I  think 
it  means  snow." 

As  he  spoke  he  walked  to  a  window,  drew  aside  the 
heavy,  old-fashioned  curtains,  and  looked  out. 

"  Snowing  hard,"  he  said.  "  I  thought  the  tail  of  that 
wind  meant  snow." 

"  Will  it  delay  the  trains  ?  "  said  the  mother,  breathing 
close. 

**  We  will  hope  not,"  said  Dr.  Harris. 

Dr.  Walker  replaced  the  curtains  and  returned  to  the 
fire  to  warm  his  hands. 

Mrs.  Broke  was  no  longer  able  to  stay  in  the  room.  As 
she  went  out  into  the  hall,  and  was  in  the  act  of  shutting 
the  library  door  cautiously  behind  her,  she  was  met  by 
the  tragic  face  of  the  old  butler. 

"  Any  change,  ma'am  ?  "  he  said  in  a  scarcely  articulate 
voice. 

"  Practically  none,  I  am  afraid,  Porson." 

Broke  was  sitting  in  the  darkest  part  of  the  hall.  Some 
distance  from  him,  in  the  middle  of  a  large  sofa  before  the 
fire.  Lord  Bosket  was  seated  also.  Broke  was  supporting 
his  chin  on  his  hands,  and  was  staring  into  vacancy  with  a 
perplexed  look  on  his  face.  Lord  Bosket  had  his  hands 
stuck  in  his  pockets  and  his  head  lying  back  on  the  cush- 
ions, while  his  muddy  breeches  and  boots  were  toasting  at 


BARBED  WIRE  417 

the  wide  hearth.  Alternately  he  seemed  to  be  shedding 
tears  and  to  be  imbibing  whisky  and  water.  The  rest  of 
the  people  had  gone  away. 

Broke  did  not  speak,  nor  at  the  approach  of  his  wife 
did  he  lift  his  head. 

"  A  damn  nice  Christmas  for  us/'  said  Lord  Bosket, 
with  half  a  grunt  and  half  a  groan. 

Mrs.  Broke  made  an  effort  to  speak  reassuringly.  Lord 
Bosket  shook  his  head. 

"  I  knew  it  was  all  up  with  'em  both  as  soon  as  I 
saw  'em  go,"  he  said.  "  I  never  saw  such  a  toss  in  my 
life." 

"  They  have  sent  for  a  surgeon  from  London.  If  she 
lives  until  he  comes  there  is  a  chance  that  something  may 
be  done." 

Lord  Bosket  refused  to  be  comforted.  He  began  again 
to  shed  tears  softly. 

All  this  time  Broke  had  not  moved,  and  he  did  not  ap- 
pear to  have  listened  to  a  word  that  had  been  spoken. 

The  girls  were  hanging  about  in  a  corridor.  They  were 
still  hatted  and  booted  and  in  their  habits.  Their  faces 
were  scared,  but  unemotional,  and  one  and  all  preserved 
the  intense  silence  of  their  father.  Jane  still  held  the  hat 
with  the  broken  brim.  They  were  like  sheep  huddling 
in  a  furrow  waiting  for  the  black  storm  to  burst  upon 
their  heads  that  the  winds  have  gathered.  They  hardly 
knew  enough  of  life  to  be  aware  of  the  precise  nature  of 
the  mysterious  thing  that  was  happening.  They  had  been 
pushed  to  the  extreme  verge  of  their  intelligence ;  beyond, 
into  the  immense  and  awful  void  of  the  unknown,  they 
did  not  try  to  peer. 

Once  out  of  the  room,  Mrs.  Broke  could  not  rest  until 
she  was  back  in  it.  She  returned  to  find  that  things  had 
suffered  no  change.  The  doctors  were  standing  near  the 
fire  conversing  in  undertones,  exactly  as  when  she  had  left 
them.  With  all  the  power  of  her  mind  she  strove  to  re- 
sign herself  to  the  tardy,  uneventful  passing  of  the  min- 
utes. The  only  respite  to  this  dreadful  inaction  was  when 
first  one  doctor,  and  then,  perhaps,  half  an  hour  after- 


4i8  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

wards,  the  other,  rose  from  his  chair  to  take  a  glance  at 
Joan.  Once  or  twice  Mrs.  Broke  drew  aside  the  curtains 
to  look  at  the  falling  snow.  It  was  still  being  shaken  out 
of  a  dense  sky  in  silent,  persistent  flakes.  Already  the 
lawn  was  thickly  covered,  and  the  depth  of  the  fall  could 
be  gauged  by  the  layer  that  rested  on  the  branches  of  a 
tree  which  pressed  against  the  window. 

The  slow  hours  passed.  Life  remained  in  Joan,  but  not 
once  could  it  be  said  to  flicker  back  into  a  state  of  con- 
sciousness. After  some  three  hours  had  followed  the 
sending  of  the  telegram.  Dr.  Walker  lingered  in  one  of  his 
excursions  to  the  side  of  the  bed,  and  by  a  slight  movement 
of  the  head  was  observed  to  summon  Dr.  Harris.  For 
some  time  they  stood  together  looking  down  upon  it  in- 
tently, and  making  slight,  inaudible  comments  to  one  an- 
other.    Afterwards  they  returned  to  the  fire. 

Although  Mrs.  Broke  could  learn  nothing  of  what  was 
in  their  minds  she  hung  upon  the  expression  of  their 
inscrutable  faces.  Feverishly  as  her  eyes  traversed  them, 
they  were  a  closed  book  which  she  could  not  read. 

"No  change?" 

"  No  change,"  they  said. 

"  Do  you  think  now " 

"  The  chances  are  now  in  her  favour  that  she  may  hold 
out  until  he  comes." 

Mrs.  Broke  then  went  to  arrange  for  the  surgeon  to  be 
met  at  Covenden  station.  Lord  Bosket  rose  immediately 
to  go  himself. 

After  that  half  an  hour  passed  in  silence,  which  was 
only  broken  by  the  stertorous  breathing  of  Joan.  One  of 
the  doctors  took  out  his  watch. 

"  He  should  be  here  in  twenty-five  minutes  if  he  caught 
the  seven-twenty  and  the  weather  and  the  Christmas  traf- 
fic have  not  delayed  the  train.     He  is  being  met,  I  hope  ?  " 

"  My  brother  went  half  an  hour  ago." 

A  muflled  knock  came  to  the  library  door,  and  the  old 
butler  crept  in  on  tiptoe.  He  handed  Dr.  Walker  a  tele- 
gram. 


BARBED  WIRE  419 

"  It  is  not  to  tell  us  he  cannot  come !  "  said  Mrs.  Broke, 
breaking  for  an  instant  the  fine-drawn  thread  of  her  self- 
control. 

"  Arrive  Cuttisham  8.31 — MacLachlan,"  the  telegram 
said. 

A  faint  "  Oh !  "  was  wrung  out  of  her. 

She  who  for  four  mortal  hours  had  suffered  an  almost 
unendurable  suspense  was  now  afflicted  with  a  terrible 
excitement. 

"  If  the  train  is  punctual  they  must  be  almost  here." 

She  turned  to  look  at  the  clock  on  the  chimneypiece, 
having  forgotten  that  she  had  stopped  it  hours  ago. 

In  an  attempt  to  put  the  slow  passing  of  the  seconds 
out  of  her  mind  she  left  the  room  again.  She  went  out  to 
the  man  who  still  cowered  mute  in  the  darkest  part  of  the 
hall,  and  who  in  four  hours  had  not  once  changed  his 
posture. 

"  The  surgeon  will  be  here  in  a  few  minutes,  Edmund. 
Here  is  his  telegram." 

Abruptly,  but  without  speaking,  Broke  rose  to  his  feet 
in  a  rather  aimless  manner,  almost  as  if  galvanized  into 
life  by  the  slip  of  pink  paper  in  the  hand  of  his  wife; 
and  then  as  she  returned  to  the  library,  he  followed  her. 
There  was  something  in  the  act  that  resembled  that  of  a 
man  walking  in  his  sleep. 

When  they  entered  the  room  together  Mrs.  Broke  saw 
that  both  doctors  were  standing  side  by  side  and  bending 
over  the  mattress.  One  was  holding  Joan's  wrist;  the 
other,  stooping  over  her,  was  watching  her  face  with  mi- 
nute intensity. 

"  Mrs.  Broke."     She  heard  her  name. 

In  much  the  same  manner  that  th^  prisoner  at  the  bar 
hears  the  foreman  of  the  jury  utter  the  sinister  word 
"  Guilty "  did  the  mother  hear  her  name  pronounced. 
Her  soul  fell  into  a  kind  of  stupefaction.  She  moved  to 
the  couch.  Broke  following  mechanically,  instinctively  like 
a  dumb  animal.  She  did  not  dare  to  look  at  the  impas- 
sive men  before  her,  but  forced  herself  to  fix  her  eyes  on 
the  face  of  her  eldest  daughter.    A  scarcely  perceptible 


420  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

tremor  was  emanating  from  it,  hardly  so  much,  perhaps, 
as  the  flickering  of  a  candle  in  a  draught  for  the  fraction 
of  a  second  before  it  flutters  out.  To  know  whether  the 
sealed  eyelids  twitched  or  whether  they  were  still  was  not 
possible  for  she  saw  everything  through  a  dancing  red 
haze.  The  cold  face,  the  colour  of  snow,  seemed  to  be  a 
little  convulsed;  the  chest  sank.  The  fact  slowly  over- 
spread her  senses  that  the  loud,  stertorous  breathing  was 
no  longer  to  be  heard. 

"  Joan !  "  and  then  eagerly :     "  Joan,  speak  to  me !  " 

She  continued  to  look  at  the  face  with  a  far-off  com- 
prehension of  the  incomprehensible.  Presently  she  drew 
her  eyes  away  dully  to  confront  the  doctors.  They  had 
turned  away.  Broke  alone  was  standing  by  her  side.  His 
face  was  grey.  She  placed  her  hand  on  his  sleeve,  a  little 
authoritatively,  and  led  him  away  a  few  paces  in  the  man- 
ner that  a  mother  leads  a  child. 

At  the  far  end  of  the  room  the  door  was  seen  to  open. 
The  old  butler's  hushed  voice  broke  the  silence. 

**  Sir  Peter  MacLachlan.'* 

A  thin,  tall,  sandy-haired  man,  with  a  pale  red  com- 
plexion peaked  with  the  cold  and  empurpled  round  the 
nose  and  ears,  came  briskly  out  of  the  darkness  beyond  the 
lamps.  He  looked  too  young  to  bear  so  great  a  reputa- 
tion. He  was  accompanied  by  an  older,  more  conven- 
tional-looking man,  who  carried  a  small  handbag. 

Dr.  Walker  stepped  forward  to  meet  them. 

"  We  are  much  obliged  to  you  for  coming.  Sir  Peter," 
he  said,  offering  his  hand  to  the  youngish  man  with  the 
sandy  hair,  "but  I  am  sorry  to  say  you  are  just  a  little 
too  late." 


CHAPTER  XLII 

AD   GLORIAM    DEI    ET   IN    MEMORIAM    BROKEyE 

ON  Christmas  morning  a  pilgrimage  was  made  to  the 
churchyard  of  Covenden  to  choose  the  last  resting- 
place  of  Joan.  It  was  in  keeping  with  the  new  order  of 
things,  an  indication  of  the  spirit  of  the  age,  that  Joan 
was  not  to  repose  in  the  company  of  her  forebears  in  the 
church  itself.  It  was  believed  that  she  was  the  first 
Broke  of  Covenden  dying  at  home  in  all  that  long  tally 
of  eight  hundred  years  who  was  not  committed  to  the 
vaults  of  the  sacred  edifice.  She  was  to  lie  in  humbler 
fashion  in  the  God's  Acre  under  the  common  sky.  It  was 
in  deference  to  the  wish  of  her  mother  that  her  eldest 
daughter  should  open  a  new  era  in  the  history  of  her 
name. 

The  little  church  could  not  go  on  for  ever  with  fresh 
tablets  added  generation  after  generation  to  its  walls. 
The  tombs  beneath  had  long  been  groaning.  Warriors 
and  statesmen  Brokes  were  there  from  the  time  of  the 
Plantagenets.  Simple  rural  Brokes  were  there  as  well, 
plain  and  pious  countryfolk,  whose  only  claim  upon  their 
race  was  that  they  supplied  the  links  of  its  transmission. 
But  Brokes  illustrious  and  Brokes  obscure — every  wearer 
of  that  name  was  secure  upon  his  return  to  whence  he 
came  of  his  niche  in  the  sacred  house  that  was  dedicated 
to  the  glory  of  God  and  the  house  of  Broke.  "  Ad  gloriam 
Dei  et  in  memoriam  Brokeae." 

Joan  was  to  lie  in  the  open  air  she  loved  so  well.  It  was 
not  hers  to  repose  cheek  by  jowl  with  her  medieval  fore- 
bear who  lay  with  his  lady  by  his  side,  clad  in  complete 
mail  save  for  the  lifted  vizor  that  showed  his  face,  with 
his  sword  clasped  to  his  breast  in  his  iron  fists,  and  his 
crossed  feet  resting  on  a  faithful  hound,  emblem  of  loyalty 

421 


422  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

— image  of  a  Crusader,  returned  from  the  wars  in  Pales- 
tine. It  was  not  hers  to  lie  with  her  less  martial  ancestor 
of  the  age  of  Elizabeth  who  knelt  to  face  his  spouse  in 
the  attitude  of  prayer,  with  his  sixteenth-century  jerkin 
cut  to  simulate  the  hauberk  of  the  knight  his  neighbour, 
although  no  more  warlike  accomplishment  was  his  than  a 
Bible  on  a  pedestal.  Nor  was  it  hers  to  lie  with  her  more 
fanciful  kinsman  of  the  Georgian  period  who  allowed  a 
poetic  licence  to  dictate  the  panoply  of  death ;  who  sought 
therein  to  combine  the  Augustan  age  with  that  of  the 
Second  Stuart  by  placing  periwigs  upon  their  heads,  bus- 
kins on  their  legs,  and  as  a  last  embellishment  laid  over 
all,  the  toga  of  the  ancient  senate  house  beside  the  Tiber. 

Could  Broke  have  consulted  his  own  wishes,  his  eldest 
daughter  would  have  lain  with  these.  To  his  medieval 
mind  the  laws  of  sanitation  had  no  appeal.  In  a  matter  of 
this  sort  common  sense  was  for  the  common  people.  He 
would  have  been  the  last  person  in  the  world  to  allow  it  to 
take  precedence  of  tradition  and  pride  of  kindred.  He 
would  have  had  science  and  the  public  weal  yield  humbly 
in  all  things  to  the  illustrious  dead.  But  that  morning  the 
bruised  human  father  had  not  the  physical  power  to  carry 
his  point.  Mrs.  Broke  in  the  name  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury prevailed  over  the  twelfth. 

Therefore  Broke,  his  wife,  and  the  three  children  still 
left  to  them,  set  out  on  Christmas  morning  in  the  com- 
pany of  the  head  gardener  to  the  little  churchyard  to 
choose  six  feet  of  sepulchre.  Their  road  took  them  past 
the  cottage  inhabited  by  Billy's  wife  and  her  aunt.  Mrs. 
Broke  had  had  the  consideration  to  have  them  informed 
already  of  the  tragedy  of  the  previous  evening.  The 
blinds  of  the  cottage  were  pulled  down,  the  door  was  shut, 
and  there  was  not  a  sign  of  either  of  its  occupants. 

The  churchyard,  hanging  on  the  face  of  the  hill,  sloped 
at  an  angle  of  thirty  degrees.  The  small  church  itself 
seemed  to  rise  sheer  behind  the  gates.  This,  however, 
was  an  optical  illusion,  as  it  was  separated  from  them  by 
a  moss-grown  path  of  considerable  length.     As  the  little 


AD  GLORIAM  DEI  423 

procession  slowly  ascended  it  there  could  be  heard  those 
at  worship  within  the  sacred  precincts,  uplifting  their 
voices  to  the  strains  of  "  Hark !  the  herald  angels  sing ! " 
in  recognition  of  the  joyful  character  of  the  occasion. 

The  mournful  little  party  had  to  pass  the  entrance 
porch.  As  they  came  near,  the  worm-eaten  oak  doors 
slowly  opened  to  emit  the  louder  notes  of  the  organ,  and 
the  fervent  rustic  voices  in  a  lustier  strain.  Two  women 
were  passing  out  of  the  church. 

They  came  full  upon  the  little  company,  which  by  now 
was  level  with  the  church  door.  One  of  these  women  was 
young ;  the  other  old ;  both  were  draped  heavily  in  mourn- 
ing. They  were  clinging  to  the  arms  of  each  other,  and 
one  at  least  appeared  to  be  completely  overcome.  Their 
faces  struck  out  with  the  vivid  pallor  of  the  snow  that 
pervaded  the  grass,  the  trees  and  the  gravestones.  Mrs. 
Broke  stopped  to  detain  them.  And  at  the  same  instant 
she  laid  her  hand  on  Broke's  arm  in  a  decisive  manner, 
with  an  unmistakable  determination  to  detain  him  also. 

**  This  is  Billy's  wife,  Edmund,"  she  said,  making  the 
physical  attempt  to  draw  him  towards  the  fragile  creature 
who,  with  horror  in  her  eyes,  was  clasping  the  arm  of  her 
aunt.  But  the  peremptory  solicitude  of  her  tone  went  for 
nothing.  Broke,  without  any  hesitation,  without  so  much 
as  a  glance  at  the  two  stricken  women,  firmly  disengaged 
himself  from  the  grasp  of  his  wife,  and  passed  on  round 
the  angle  of  the  porch.  With  the  same  absence  of  hesita- 
tion his  daughters  followed.  They  had  heard  the  words 
of  their  mother,  but  their  gaze  was  riveted  on  the  form 
and  bearing  of  their  father. 

When  Broke  and  his  daughters  had  passed  out  of  sight 
Miss  Sparrow  was  able  in  a  measure  to  suppress  the  emo- 
tion which  had  overwhelmed  her.  She  made  her  usual 
curtsey  and  found  the  courage  to  speak. 

"  The  music,  ma*am,  was  too  dreadful.  I  could  not  help 
thinking  of  you  and  what  you  must  suffer  this  Christmas 
morning.     It  is  a  cruel,  cruel  Christmas  for  you!" 

"  I  hope  my  message  did  not  shock  you  too  much." 


424  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  It  was  very  kind,  ma'am,  and  considerate." 

All  this  time  the  girl  had  been  looking  at  Mrs.  Broke 
dumbly. 

"  How  are  you,  dear  Alice  ?  You  are  wise  to  get  as 
much  of  the  pure  out-of-doors  air  as  you  :can." 

Alice  continued  to  look  at  her  mother-in-law  with  un- 
faltering eyes. 

"  I  have  been  thinking,"  she  said  in  a  deliberate  voice, 
"  that  perhaps  it  is  better  that  someone  shall  be  there  to 
meet  him  in  case  I  am  not." 

"Who,  my  dear?    And  where?" 

Mrs.  Broke  was  disconcerted  by  the  matter-of-fact  tone, 
and  all  the  more  because  for  the  moment  she  was  at  a  loss 
to  divine  the  meaning  of  the  words. 

"  I  mean  my  husband,"  said  Alice,  with  a  deliberation 
that  gave  Mrs.  Broke  a  sensation  of  faintness.  "  His  sis- 
ter is  there  already,  and  he  is  going  there,  and  I  am  going 
too." 

Mrs.  Broke  recoiled  from  the  calm  voice.  She  turned 
to  the  aunt. 

"  You  must  really  see  that  she  takes  more  fresh  air, 
Miss  Sparrow." 

"  I  would  like  to  be  buried  here,  if  I  may,  in  this  sweet 
place,"  said  Alice,  "  which  is  where  he  was  born  and  in 
which  he  lived  longer  than  anywhere  else.  I  may  please, 
may  I  not  ?  " 

Mrs.  Broke  was  too  weak  this  morning  to  cope  with 
these  morbid  fancies.  Somewhat  hastily  she  left  aunt 
and  niece  and  went  round  the  church  to  rejoin  Broke  and 
her  daughters.  They  were  discovered  in  a  secluded  corner 
of  the  churchyard  where,  in  a  place  surrounded  by  bushy 
firs,  a  spot  had  been  chosen  for  Joan's  last  resting-place. 


CHAPTER  XLIII 

MOTHER  AND  DAUGHTER 

FROM  that  Christmas  morning  Mrs.  Broke  went  every- 
day to  the  cottage  on  the  hill.  As  the  time  of  her 
son's  wife  drew  near  she  seemed  to  recognize  by  instinct 
rather  than  by  the  process  of  reason  that  the  prospect  of 
a  new  generation  of  their  name  was  fraught  with  great 
issues.  She  had  not  told  Broke  as  yet.  Indeed,  she 
hardly  dared  to  do  so  in  his  present  mood.  The  tragic 
death  of  Joan  had  appeared  to  harden  rather  than  to  relax 
his  heart.     He  was  of  the  type  that  adversity  embitters. 

At  this  time,  too,  one  momentous  issue  filled  the  mind 
of  every  person  in  the  country :  the  war  with  the  Boers  in 
South  Africa.  The  whole  nation  was  deeply  humiliated 
by  a  succession  of  reverses  that  had  overtaken  the  British 
arms.  Men  of  all  classes,  and  of  an  age  long  past  that 
usually  associated  with  active  service,  were  volunteering 
for  the  Front.  Among  these  patriots  were  Broke  and 
Lord  Bosket.  They  had  placed  their  services  at  the  dis- 
posal of  their  country.  But  their  country,  alas!  had 
shown  no  disposition  to  accept  them. 

In  the  stress  of  this  war  fever  the  possibility  of  disaster 
was  seldom  absent  from  the  mind  of  Mrs.  Broke.  For  one 
thing  she  was  haunted  by  the  obsession  that  had  taken 
such  a  terrible  hold  of  the  young  wife.  Her  thoughts 
strayed  continually  to  the  fragile  creature  at  the  cottage, 
and  whenever  they  did  so  she  could  not  dissemble  her 
fears.  Alice's  conviction  that  something  was  about  to 
overtake  or  had  overtaken  Billy  grew  more  intense  as  the 
days  passed.  Indeed,  it  became  more  powerful  day  by 
day,  so  that  the  nearer  her  ordeal  approached  the  less 
seemed  to  grow  her  desire  to  survive  it. 

42s 


426  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

One  morning,  in  the  early  days  of  the  New  Year,  Mrs. 
Broke  was  hastily  scanning  the  newspaper  after  break- 
fast, and,  as  usual  with  them  of  late,  her  eyes  turned  first 
to  the  grimmest  of  all  the  grim  columns  in  it:  that  which 
set  forth  the  latest  list  of  [casualties  to  hand  from  the 
seat  of  war.  Many  dim  and  aching  eyes  were  to  look 
upon  it  that  morning,  as  every  morning,  but  none  more 
unhappily  than  those  of  this  bereaved  woman  in  the  deso- 
lation of  her  heart.  In  a  few  incredibly  short  months 
three  children  had  become  lost  to  her.  And  such  was  the 
state  of  despair  in  which  she  was  now  sunk,  that  she,  too, 
was  haunted  with  the  prepossession  that  the  sum  of  her 
misfortunes  was  not  yet  complete.  She  had  the  convic- 
tion— such  was  the  abyss  in  which  that  bruised  spirit  was 
sunk — that  the  cup  of  her  sorrows  was  not  yet  full.  As 
long  as  her  son  lived  the  hope  remained,  however  faint, 
that  one  day  he  might  be  given  back  to  her.  Circumstance, 
however,  had  merely  to  write  his  name  in  that  dread  list 
in  the  morning  paper  to  destroy  that  hope  once  and  for  all. 

This  morning  of  mid-January  she  turned  as  usual  to  the 
newspaper  with  shuddering  eyes.  It  was  a  refinement  of 
torture  that  although  she  was  denied  the  solace  of  hope  the 
pangs  of  suspense  were  not  on  that  account  allayed.  Cir- 
cumstance had  the  ingenuity  of  a  Grand  Inquisitor  in  the 
bestowal  of  pain.  And  this  morning  she  had  not  read  far 
down  the  page  when  her  eyes  fell  on  an  item  which  at  first 
seemed  to  wear  an  air  of  only  distant  significance.  It  said : 
'*  Rhodesian  Light  Horse,  No.  3013,  Sergeant  W.  Broek 
(?),  Killed  in  action  near  Schnadhorst's  Spruit,  Janu- 
ary 2." 

The  number  was  the  first  thing  that  caught  her  atten- 
tion. It  corresponded  with  the  one  she  carried  in  her 
brain.  From  that  she  went  on  to  the  other  particulars  as 
set  forth,  and  all  too  soon  her  last  doubt  had  passed.  Even 
the  misspelt  and  queried  name  became  a  part  of  a  har- 
monious whole. 

Perhaps  the  fact  that  struck  her  most  forcibly  at  first 
was  a  certain  irony  in  the  terms  of  the  announcement. 
Her  capacity  for  suffering  was  already  past  its  highest. 


MOTHER  AND  DAUGHTER  427 

As  one  stricken  with  a  mortal  disease  may  not  have  the 
same  susceptibility  to  pain  as  a  perfectly  normal  and 
healthy  frame,  so  Mrs.  Broke  had  already  gone  beyond 
the  stage  of  her  keenest  anguish.  Her  son  was  dead ;  but 
the  calamity  had  been  foreseen.  It  was  no  more  than 
another  link  in  the  chain  of  events  that  was  pressing  out 
the  lives  of  them  all.  The  last  of  an  ancient  line,  about 
whom  had  gathered  centuries  of  tradition,  had  perished 
as  an  obscure  common  soldier  in  a  skirmish  in  a  distant 
land. 

She  had  not  the  courage  to  go  to  Broke  and  tell  him 
then.  So  greatly  had  he  been  tried  already  that,  as  was 
the  case  with  her,  the  capacity  for  suffering  had  perhaps 
been  blunted.  But  in  any  case  it  seemed  to  verge  on  the 
inhuman  to  thrust  upon  him  that  which  for  the  moment 
had  been  withheld. 

A  little  afterwards,  when  the  nature  of  the  tidings  as- 
sumed a  more  definite  outline  in  her  mind,  the  four  walls 
of  the  room  in  which  she  sat  began  to  contract.  Her 
senses  were  still  sufficiently  normal  to  be  aware  that  this 
was  the  merest  illusion;  that  fact  notwithstanding,  she 
rose  and  went  to  another  room.  In  a  little  while  the  effect 
was  repeated  there.  A  craving  came  upon  her  to  go  out 
of  doors.  There  was  something  in  her  that  demanded  a 
freer,  more  spacious  air. 

Once  out  of  doors  she  was  invaded  by  the  necessity  of 
making  her  way  to  the  cottage  at  once.  The  future  might 
depend  entirely  upon  that.  It  was  absolutely  essential  that 
the  news  contained  in  the  morning's  newspaper  should  not 
come  to  the  notice  of  the  wife.  It  called  for  no  common 
hardihood  to  go  to  that  place  there  and  then,  but  once 
again  a  bitter  need  had  made  her  strong. 

When  she  came  to  the  cottage  door,  Dr.  Walker  was  in 
the  act  of  leaving. 

"  Ha !  Mrs.  Broke,  I  wanted  to  see  you.  I  have  ordered 
her  to  keep  her  bed.  I  think  it  wise ;  and  I  must  be  sent 
for  at  the  first  moment." 

"  Have  you  an  idea  when  ?  " 

"  This  evening  most  probably." 


428  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

Mrs.  Broke  then  put  a  tentative  question  to  the  doctor 
as  to  whether  he  had  seen  anything  of  a  special  interest 
in  that  morning's  newspaper.  When  he  said  he  had  not 
she  drew  the  sheet  containing  the  announcement  out  of 
her  jcloak,  and  asked  him  to  read  the  Hne  on  which  her 
finger  was  placed. 

"  You  don't  mean  to  say  that  is  our  poor  boy  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  she  said  in  a  firm  voice. 

There  was  a  moment  in  which  the  doctor  betrayed  some 
emotion.  He  then  peered  hard  at  Mrs.  Broke.  Her  forti- 
tude struck  him  as  very  remarkable. 

"  I  feel  for  you  very  much,"  he  said  in  an  odd  quaver- 
ing tone.  "  You  have  had  a  lot  of  bad  luck  lately.  And 
the  poor  father?    He  must  be  dreadfully  cut  up." 

"  He  does  not  know  yet." 

"  Keep  it  from  him  as  long  as  you  can.  And,  of  course, 
the  child  upstairs " 

"  Indeed,  yes." 

"Of  course,  it  goes  without  saying  as  far  as  you  are 
concerned.  But  the  question  arises  whether  we  shall  be 
able  to  keep  her  mind  quiet.  She  appears  in  a  sense  to 
know  already." 

"  Is  it  advisable  to  tell  Miss  Sparrow  ?  " 

"  She  seems  a  sensible  old  woman.  As  for  the  nurse, 
she  is  a  veritable  dragon  of  prudence  in  whom  you  will 
find  a  great  ally." 

Mrs.  Broke  passed  into  the  cottage  to  find  the  veritable 
dragon  of  prudence  filling  an  india-rubber  hot-water  bottle 
from  a  kettle  on  the  hob.  She  was  an  apple-cheeked 
creature  of  the  country-side,  severe  of  years  and  mien,  a 
bedroom  autocrat  accustomed  by  divine  right  of  calling 
to  exact  the  obedience  and  the  homage  of  all  the  world. 

"  Good  morning,  ma'am,"  she  said,  without  a  pause  in 
the  operation  she  was  conducting. 

"  Good  morning.     May  I  go  upstairs  ?  " 

"  No,  ma'am,  she  is  too  excited.  I  would  not  have  let 
her  aunt  go  up,  only  she  is  so  used  to  having  her  about  her 
that  it  might  have  unsettled  her  more  if  she  had  not  been 
able  to  see  her." 


MOTHER  AND  DAUGHTER  429 

"  How  is  she  this  morning  ?  " 

"  I  am  not  pleased  with  her,  ma'am.  She  is  feverish. 
And  she  has  taken  the  notion  that  her  husband  is  dead, 
and  that  she  is  going  to  die  too;  although,  for  that  mat- 
ter, they  are  often  taken  that  way.  But  this  notion  about 
Mr.  William  looks  like  making  it  very  awkward,  ma'am. 
She  is  firmly  convinced  he  is  dead,  although  it  is  all  a  flam, 
no  more  than  fancy." 

"  On  the  contrary,  I  am  afraid  it  is  true,"  said  Mrs. 
Broke  in  a  low  voice. 

The  nurse  nearly  allowed  the  hot-water  bottle  to  fall 
from  her  hand. 

**  You  can't  mean  to  say,  ma'am,  that  our  poor  Mr. 
William ? '' 

"  The  news  is  in  this  morning's  paper." 

The  face  of  the  nurse  was  a  picture  of  blank  consterna- 
tion. 

"'  I  am  sure,  ma'am,  I  feel  for  you  all.  It  is  terrible 
hard  for  you  and  Mr.  Broke,  and  so  soon  after  poor  Miss 
Joan.  And,  poor  lamb,  she  is  right  after  all.  We  might 
well  not  be  able  to.  get  it  out  of  her  head.  It  is  just  like 
poor  Mrs.  Pearson,  who  knew  her  husband  was  drowned 
hours  before  they  brought  home  the  body.  And  here's 
her  auntie  and  I  been  a-scolding  of  her ! " 

At  this  moment  Miss  Sparrow  was  seen  descending  the 
stairs,  bearing  an  untasted  cup  of  milk  in  her  hand.  At 
the  sight  of  Mrs.  Broke  she  stopped  half-way  in  her 
descent  to  drop  her  inevitable  curtsey.  Custom  had  ren- 
dered it  so  precise  that  she  was  able  to  perform  the  feat 
without  spilling  a  drop  of  the  milk  she  carried. 

Mrs.  Broke  greeted  the  old  woman  with  the  marked 
kindness  of  tone  she  never  failed  to  use  to  her. 

"  I  have  bad  news  for  you.  Miss  Sparrow,"  she  said  a 
little  while  afterwards,  "  but  I  know  you  have  great 
courage." 

"  I  will  try  to  have,  ma'am,"  said  the  old  woman  simply. 

"  Our  fears  are  realized.  My  son  has  been  killed  in 
South  Africa." 


430  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

The  old  womian  stood  perfectly  still,  with  her  wizened 
hands  crossed  on  her  flat  bosom. 

"Two  in  a  fortnight,  ma'am.  I  don't  know,  ma'am, 
how  your  mind  can  bear  it.     My  heart  bleeds  for  you." 

There  was  an  extraordinary  pity  in  the  tone  which 
touched  the  mother.  Such  a  solicitude  directed  to  herself 
she  found  to  be  infinitely  more  unnerving  than  an  outburst 
of  woe. 

"  It  is  hard  to  say  *  Thy  will  be  done,' "  said  the  old 
woman  in  a  contained  voice. 

For  some  little  time  she  seemed  either  unwilling  or  un- 
able to  apply  to  her  own  life  the  bearing  the  news  must 
have  upon  it.  But  at  last  she  broke  forth  quite  suddenly, 
in  a  voice  that  was  like  the  squeal  of  a  hare  that  has 
been  hit: 

"My  Alice!     My  Alice!" 

The  idea  appeared  to  have  struck  her  with  all  its  force 
for  the  first  time. 

"  The  news  must  be  kept  from  her  at  all  costs,"  said 
Mrs.  Broke,  shaken  with  pity. 

"  Not  for  long,  ma'am,  not  for  long.  Not  for  more 
than  a  day  or  two  at  the  most.  Already  she  knows  in  her 
heart." 

"  I  fear  she  does,  poor  child." 

Silence  came  between  them»  again  until  the  old  woman 
spoke  once  more,  this  time  with  a  brevity  that  transfixed 
the  listener. 

"  Sentence  of  death,  ma'am,  for  Alice !  " 

Mrs.  Broke's  conviction  of  the  truth  of  this  statement 
was  so  clear  that  she  was  not  able  to  make  an  attempt  to 
console  the  poor  old  thing. 

"  She  is  my  all,  ma'am,"  said  the  old  woman  desolately. 
"  She  is  all  I  have  got  in  the  world.  I  shall  not  be  able 
to  bear  the  loneliness  when  she  is  taken." 

The  old  woman  pressed  her  fingers,  coarsened  with  a 
lifetime  of  toil,  against  her  flat  chest.  Her  shrivelled 
frame  was  erect,  and  as  gaunt  in  its  rigidness  as  the  arm 
of  a  windmill. 


MOTHER  AND  DAUGHTER  431 

"  It  seems  hard."  she  went  on,  with  a  total  absence  of 
passion,  "  that  the  poor  young  gentleman  should  have  been 
killed  just  when  that  great  fortune  had  come  to  him.  If 
it  had  come  to  him  a  little  sooner  Alice  would  have  been 
saved.  He  would  not  have  needed  to  leave  her  then,  and 
she  would  not  have  died.  But  *  God  moves  in  a  mysteri- 
ous way,'  as  the  beautiful  hymn  tells  us.  I  am  an  old 
woman,  ma'am,  but  I  have  always  noticed  that  things  fall 
out  in  a  way  you  cannot  comprehend.  A  little  bit  here 
and  a  little  bit  there  and  all  would  have  been  changed.  I 
suppose  if  we  always  knew  what  God  was  going  to  do  we 
should  presume  upon  our  knowledge.  If  that  money  had 
come  just  a  short  month  or  two  sooner  two  beautiful  lives 
would  not  have  been  sacrificed,  and  you  and  me,  ma'am, 
and  the  poor  father  and  those  poor  dear  sisters  would  not 
be  feeling  that  the  light  of  their  lives  had  gone  out" 

"  It  is  to  teach  us  poor  women  the  gospel  of  patience." 

"  There  are  times,  ma'am,  when  it  almost  seems  that 
you  cannot  be  patient  any  more." 

"  If  ever  women  cease  to  be  patient  there  will  perish 
the  only  hope  remaining  to  the  world,"  said  Mrs.  Broke, 
speaking  for  her  sex  with  the  mournful  conviction  of  a 
seer. 

A  merciful  silence  came  between  them  again.  Speech 
lost  its  adequacy.  In  their  ways  of  life  they  diverged  as 
widely  as  two  people  could;  their  lots  had  not  been  cast 
in  the  same  plane;  but  they  were  a  pair  of  women  who 
felt  the  pinch  of  life  in  a  precisely  similar  fashion.  As 
one  individual  they  moved  through  the  same  abysmal 
darkness. 

In  this  nadir  of  the  spirit  in  which  they  were  lost  the 
cottage  door  was  opened,  and  the  figure  of  a  young  girl 
was  seen  upon  the  threshold.  She  entered  the  little  room 
with  a  quiet,  assured  step.  Suddenly  she  stopped,  and  a 
harrowing  irresolution  seemed  to  invade  her.  At  the  sight 
of  one  seated  in  that  room  she  drew  back  abruptly  as 
though  in  the  grip  of  some  powerful  reaction.  Step  by 
step  the  small  figure  retreated  backwards  to  the  cottage 
door. 


432  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

Mrs.  Broke,  who  was  seated  with  her  face  towards  the 
door,  had  not  taken  her  eyes  from  those  of  the  old  woman 
when  the  first  sound  of  the  lifted  latch  had  crept  upon  her 
ears.  It  was  not  at  first  that  the  indecision  of  the  person 
who  had  entered  was  rendered  to  her  absent  senses,  which 
were  so  far  away  from  the  trite  facts  that  were  being 
evolved  out  of  the  present.  No  sooner  was  she  aware, 
however,  of  a  third  person  in  that  little  room,  than  she 
looked  up  to  learn  whom  it  might  be.     It  was  Delia. 

The  first  shock  of  recognition  past,  mother  and  daugh- 
ter found  themselves  peering  at  one  another  as  through 
the  mists  of  the  void  that  had  opened  between  their  lives. 
They  had  something  of  that  illusion  which  the  climbers 
of  the  Brocken  experience  when  they  behold  their  own 
shadows  reflected  on  the  opposite  mountain.  Mother  and 
daughter  were  closely  akin,  but  as  they  gazed  at  one  an- 
other now  an  immutable  law  of  their  being  appeared  to 
hold  them  forever  apart. 

This  feeling,  however,  passed  almost  immediately  from 
Mrs.  Broke's  mind.  It  was  there  but  an  instant.  No 
sooner  had  the  pale,  proud  image  of  her  youngest-born 
been  cut  into  her  brain,  than  she  rose  to  her  feet  with  a 
cry. 

"Delia!" 

There  was  no  room  in  her  already  submerged  heart  for 
the  question  of  a  loyal  attitude  to  Broke  to  enter  it.  All 
things  were  merged  in  the  cry  of  her  maternity. 

"  Delia ! "  she  cried,  and  ran  to  her  daughter  with  out- 
stretched arms. 

Not  a  nerve  in  Delia  responded  to  the  call. 

"  Delia ! "  she  cried  for  the  third  time. 

Delia  did  not  heed  her  mother's  cry.  Her  chin  was 
raised  and  her  vivid  eyes  were  looking  steadily  past  her 
to  the  wall  beyond. 

"  Have  you  nothing  to  say  to  me  ?  "  said  her  mother 
faintly.  "  Have  you  no  mercy  to  show  me  ?  If  you  have 
not  I  do  not  think  I  can  bear  it." 

Deep  down  in  her  consciousness  there  was  the  echo  of 
the  speech  her  brother  had  reported  as  having  fallen  from 


MOTHER  AND  DAUGHTER  433 

the  girl's  lips  in  relation  to  the  conduct  of  her  father. 
*'  God  may  forgive  him,  but  I  never  will !  "  These  Brokes 
v^ere  not  light  of  utterance.  It  had  seemed  to  her  at  the 
time,  and  now  the  fact  returned  upon  her  with  a  force 
that  made  her  brain  reel,  that  for  one  of  their  women  to 
make  use  of  such  a  speech  implied  not  only  a  full  concep- 
tion of  all  that  it  meant  but  also  the  implacable  power  of 
will  to  make  good  the  cruel  words. 

"  You  cannot  mean  it,  Delia !  " 

The  voice  of  the  mother  touched  no  chord  in  the  daugh- 
ter. 

"  You  cannot  mean  it,  Delia.  I  had  neither  art  nor 
part  in  your  father's  act." 

She  hardly  knew  the  words  she  used.  And  in  any  case 
the  admission  was  wrung  out  of  the  very  depths  of  that 
faithful  spirit. 

For  the  fraction  of  ar^,  instant  Delia  closed  her  eyes  as 
if  unable  to  bear  the  sight  of  her  mother's  face.  But  in 
the  next  instant  she  had  answered  her  in  the  melancholy 
voice  of  a  judge. 

"  You  suppressed  a  letter." 

"  I  confess  it.  But  it  was  to  protect  you — it  was  to 
protect  you  all.  I  may  have  been  mistaken,  but  I  say 
before  God  that  my  motive  was  not  unworthy.  Whether 
I  acted  rightly  or  wrongly,  that  you  should  judge  me  is 
more  than  I  can  bear.  Have  you  no  pity  for  the  mother 
who  has  never  had  a  thought  apart  from  the  welfare  of 
you  all?" 

"  You  had  no  pity  for  another,"  said  Delia  coldly.  "  He 
was  poor  and  he  was  defenceless.  I  do  not  think  you  de- 
serve to  be  forgiven." 

The  mercilessness  of  the  words  helped  the  mother  to 
regain  her  self-control.  With  it  returned  her  force  of 
will.  An  inflexible  determination  to  prevail  was  born  in 
her.  She  gripped  her  daughter  by  the  arm.  The  fur- 
rowed face  was  moulded  in  stern  lines. 

"  I  am  innocent,  Delia,  you  shall  do  me  that  justice.  I 
am  innocent  before  God." 

Stitch  by  stitch  the  garb  of  convention  in  which  civiliza- 


434  BROKE  OF  COVENDEK 

tion  demands  that  a  woman  of  the  world  shall  clothe  her- 
self was  being  torn  away.  Her  daughter  gazed  pitilessly 
at  the  spectacle. 

''  You  had  no  mercy." 

"  No — perhaps.     But  you — ^you  shall  extend  it  to  me/' 

She  gripped  the  unresisting  wrists  so  tightly  that  the 
imprint  of  her  fingers  was  visible.  A  slow  and  cruel  smile 
began  to  creep  out  of  Delia's  eyes,  the  peculiar  weapon  of 
one  woman  when  she  is  about  to  slay  another.  It  seemed 
to  open  a  vein  in  the  victim. 

"  You  force  me  to  my  knees,"  she  gasped. 

The  last  stitch  was  torn  away.  But  not  for  an  instant 
did  her  daughter  avert  the  gaze  that  was  killing  her  with 
its  scorn. 

"  I  hold  your  guilt  to  be  the  equal  of  my  father's,"  said 
the  melancholy  voice  of  justice. 

"  You  shall  not,  O  my  God !  " 

Their  implacable  eyes  contended.  As  when  two  blades 
equally  choice  of  temper  are  crossed  in  a  duel  to  the  death, 
it  is  left  to  the  stronger  cause  to  win  the  mastery,  it  was 
with  this  knowledge  that  these  unhappy  women  now  en- 
tered the  arena.     Let  truth  be  the  arbiter,  let  right  prevail. 

"  Delia,  I  challenge  you  to  prove  that  I  have  not  spoken 
the  truth." 

"  You  suppressed  a  letter." 

"  It  was — it  was  for  the  sake  of  you  all." 

"  You  took  me  away  that  afternoon." 

"  I  did  not  know  what  was  about  to  happen." 

"  You  had  not  any  kind  of  foreknowledge — none  what- 
ever, mother?" 

"  None." 

"You  swear  it  before  God?" 

"  Before  God  I  swear  it !  " 

The  naked  and  bleeding  woman,  the  woman  of  ineffable 
wisdom  and  mastery,  the  woman  of  unconquerable  will, 
covered  her  face  with  her  hands  in  a  spasm  of  very  shame. 
She  was  lying.     She  was  lying  to  save  her  soul. 

It  had  been  too  much  to  undergo  this  inquisition  at  the 
hands  of  one  she  called  daughter.    But  all  their  lives  these 


MOTHER  AND  DAUGHTER  435 

children  had  never  learned  to  trust  her.  She  had  never 
taken  the  trouble  to  interpret  herself  in  lucid  terms  to 
these  v^romen,  in  terms  that  could  place  all  their  doubts 
concerning  her  at  rest. 

"  You  will  believe  me,  Delia,"  said  her  mother  in  a 
voice  that  had  long  ceased  to  be  her  own. 

The  barrier  of  a  lifelong  reserve  was  broken  down. 

"  You  shall  believe  me,  Delia." 

Again  she  gripped  the  limp  wrists,  and  with  a  strength 
that  seemed  to  herself  so  great  as  to  be  capable  of  break- 
ing them  in  two.  She  searched  wildly  the  dismal  but  un- 
responsive eyes  to  find  a  trace  of  that  mercy  whose  denial 
icould  only  mean  death. 

"  You  will  believe  me,"  she  repeated  again  and  yet 
again. 

A  look  of  harrowing  conflict  came  into  the  face  of  Delia. 
Suddenly  she  began  to  rake  the  face  of  her  mother  with 
the  awful  candour  of  her  eyes.  Not  a  corner  in  which 
deception  might  cower  did  she  leave  untraversed.  The 
dismal  eyes  explored  abysses  in  that  face  which  never  be- 
fore had  had  an  existence  for  them.  Even  in  the  act  she 
grew  conscious  that  this  was  a  wonderful  face  into  which 
she  was  looking.  But  the  cruel  task  must  be  icarried 
through.  The  grey  hairs  of  her  mother,  the  hollow  cheeks, 
the  sunken  eyes,  the  wildly  trembling  lips  were  alike 
traversed  by  an  inquisition  dreadful,  inexorable. 

The  victim  did  not  quail.  Her  will  enabled  her  to  stand 
there  to  meet  those  vivisecting  eyes,  notwithstanding  that 
the  tribunal  of  the  spirit  had  declared  that  she  must  share 
the  guilt  of  Broke.  And  very,  very  slowly,  by  sheer  iron 
resolve  she  forced  her  daughter  to  concede  that  she  had 
spoken  the  truth. 

The  breath  of  both  issued  from  their  tightening  throats 
in  the  hard  and  audible  manner  of  Joan's  when  she  lay 
dying.  Delia  then  proceeded  very  slowly  and  gravely  to 
press  her  lips  upon  her  mother's  forehead. 

"  I  believe  you,  mother,"  she  said,  taking  the  broken 
woman  in  her  arms. 


CHAPTER  XLIV 

A  DWELLER  ON   THE   MOUNTAINS 

MRS.  BROKE  and  her  recovered  daughter  sat  a  long 
hour  together.  DeHa  was  spending  a  few  days  at 
Cuttisham  with  her  husband  at  the  house  of  his  father. 
That  morning  she  had  seen  the  announcement  in  the  news- 
paper of  her  brother's  death.  Like  her  mother,  she  had 
been  able  to  identify  him  by  the  number  attached  to  the 
misspelt  name.  Before  he  went  to  South  Africa  she  had 
given  him  her  promise  that  she  would  keep  in  touch  with 
his  wife.  Accordingly  she  had  corresponded  with  her 
regularly;  and  now,  under  the  stress  of  this  tragic  event, 
she  had  been  able,  not  without  a  struggle,  to  overcome 
the  repugnance  she  had  to  setting  foot  again  on  her 
father's  property.  She  had  yielded  to  the  impulse  to  make 
a  pilgrimage  to  the  one  for  whom  her  brother  had  for- 
feited everything,  even  life  itself.  Her  promise  became 
a  sacred  duty  now  that  he  was  dead. 

She  had  heard  of  Joan's  death  also  through  the  news- 
paper. But  she  had  not  yielded  to  her  intense  desire  to 
attend  her  sister's  burial,  well  knowing  that  her  presence 
at  the  graveside  would  cause  great  unhappiness  to  every 
member  of  her  family. 

Once  the  barrier  was  broken  down  between  mother  and 
daughter  their  re-established  intercourse  was  curiously 
intimate.  Now  that  Delia  had  accepted  the  fact  of  her 
mother's  innocence,  for  the  first  time  in  her  life  she  took 
her  completely  into  her  confidence.  ,  There  could  be  no 
half -measures  now  with  Delia.  It  was  the  signal  honesty 
of  her  nature  either  to  reject  or  to  accept.    Once  the  bar- 

436 


A  DWELLER  ON  THE  MOUNTAINS       437 

rier  was  down  the  broken  woman  was  received  in  the  arms 
of  her  daughter  as  a  parent  fainting  under  the  relentless 
strokes  of  fate. 

"  Do  my  sisters  know  about  Billy  ?  "  she  asked,  after 
they  had  talked  some  little  time  together. 

"  No,  alas !  nor  your  poor  father." 

"  They  must  be  almost  crushed,  poor  things.  How 
lost,  how  inexpressibly  lost  they  must  feel  without  Joan; 
and  then  Hat  too  is  gone  away.  What  dear  happy  days 
we  all  had  together  once.  One  short  year  ago  we  little 
guessed  what  life  had  in  store.  How  much  has  happened 
to  us  since  then.  I  at  least  am  not  the  shy  little  timid  girl 
I  was  in  those  days,  that  now  seem  ages  and  ages  away. 
I  am  very  greatly  changed,  and  you  too,  dear  mother, 
seem  very  much  changed.  Perhaps  it  is  that  one's  eyes 
are  not  the  same.  But  what  dear,  dear  days  they  were! 
Oh  those  sweet  winter  mornings  when  we  all  used  to  go 
hunting  with  poor  dear  Uncle  Charles ! " 

"  And  your  poor  dear  father,"  Mrs.  Broke  mterposed 
softly. 

"  I  remember  Joan  was  always  our  leader — dear,  high- 
hearted fearless  Joan.  What  a  great  soldier  she  would 
have  been ! " 

"  It  has  made  your  father  very  aged,"  said  her  mother, 
with  a  wistf  ulness  that  was  almost  timid.  "  Perhaps  you 
will  hardly  guess  how  tenderly  he  has  loved  you  all.  Per- 
haps you  will  hardly  guess  what  an  inveterate  pride  he  has 
had  in  you.  You  have  meant  so  much  to  him.  I  believe 
he  would  have  laid  down  his  life  cheerfully  rather  than  a 
hair  of  your  heads  should  suffer.  He  will  never  be  the 
same  man  again.  I  think  it  would  shock  you  to  see  how 
white  he  has  grown." 

Delia  did  not  respond. 

"  It  is  hard,"  said  Mrs.  Broke,  with  a  kind  of  sunken 
eagerness  in  her  deeply  lined  face,  "  for  us  sometimes  to 
understand  how  men  look  at  things.  I  think,  my  dear  one, 
we  ought  not  to  judge  them,  because  of  the  difference  in 
our  natures." 


438  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  They  judge  us." 

There  was  something  in  the  quality  of  the  words  that 
made  the  blood  run  cold  in  the  veins  of  the  mother. 

**  I  do  not  think  they  judge  us  harshly,"  she  said. 

"  They  commit  crimes  against  us  in  the  name  of  justice." 

"  And  if  they  do,  my  dear  one,  have  they  not  the  greater 
need  of  our  forgiveness?" 

Delia's  eyes  were  like  stone. 

"  Alas,  alas,  my  dear  one !  " 

"  Should  they  not  seek  a  true  conception  of  the  quality 
of  justice  before  they  inflict  it  upon  us?" 

"  Nothing,  my  dear  one,  must  ever  interfere  with  the 
woman's  prerogative  of  seeking  the  true  conception  of 
forgiveness." 

"  Let  men  win  it  for  themselves,  mother,  before  they 
seek  it  in  us." 

"  Alas,  there  spoke  a  Broke." 

The  reproach  was  wrung  out  of  the  unhappy  wife  and 
mother.  The  voice  of  the  medisevalist  was  heard  too 
clearly  in  his  daughter's  words. 

"  How  can  there  be  a  hope  for  the  world,  my  dear  one, 
so  long  as  we  perpetuate  the  evil  there  is  in  it  ?  " 

"  Does  not  man  mould  us  to  his  will  ?  Is  it  not  through 
him,  and  only  him,  that  progress  and  enlightenment  can 
come  ?  " 

"  Yes  and  no,  my  dear  one,"  said  Mrs.  Broke,  taking 
Delia's  hand  in  her  own.  Her  instant  anxiety  seemed  to 
mark  the  effect  of  every  word  upon  that  tortured  face. 
"  We  must  help  each  other.  The  strong  helping  the  weak, 
the  weak  helping  the  strong." 

"  Is  not  that  what  women  have  tried  to  comfort  them- 
selves with  from  the  beginning  of  time?  But  the  strong 
do  not  seem  to  grow  less  brutal." 

"  Oh,  my  poor  child !  " 

"  Oh,  I  know,  I  know !     There  is  a  poison  in  my  veins." 

The  slender  body  rocked  to  and  fro. 

"  Is  there  no  strength  within  you,  my  dear  one  ?  " 

"  The  stealthy,  subtle  poison  taints  me ;  how  you  do  not 
know." 


A  DWELLER  ON  THE  MOUNTAINS       439 

"  Much  may  be  done  by  prayer." 

"Alas!" 

"  You  must  never  forget  that  we  women,  we  wives  and 
mothers,  are  chained  to  the  oar  of  the  galley.  That  fact, 
my  dear  one,  must  teach  us  how  to  pray." 

*'  Oh,  I  know,  I  know !  " 

"  We  are  brought  into  this  world  in  a  state  of  captivity 
and  subjection.  We  cannot  put  off  our  fetters,  we  cannot 
call  ourselves  free." 

"  If  I  am  chained  to  the  galley  the  fetters  are  of  silk 
that  bind  me." 

"  They  are  fetters,  none  the  less.  And  if  the  bonds  are 
of  silk  they  are  so  much  the  harder  to  break." 

For  the  first  time  the  look  of  pain  seemed  to  lift  slightly 
in  Delia's  eyes.  Her  mother  was  looking  at  her  all  the 
time  with  furtive  anxiousness. 

"  Think  of  your  husband,"  she  said,  "  and  then  tell  me 
that  your  unhappy  father  is  forgiven." 

Delia  closed  her  eyes  mutely. 

"  You  would  be  shocked  to  know  how  broken  and  aged 
he  is." 

Delia  did  not  speak. 

"  Do  you  think  if  your  husband " 

The  question,  framed  with  a  slow  precision,  sank  into 
the  young  wife.     She  answered  very  calmly : 

"  There  is  nothing  I  would  not  do  at  his  command." 

"  The  hour  will  soon  be  here  when  I  shall  hold  you  to 
that,"  said  the  mother,  with  almost  an  air  of  victory. 

A  look  of  horror  crossed  Delia's  face. 

"If  you  ask  that  of  him,  mother,  you  will  ask  what  I 
dare  not." 

"  Then,  my  dear  one,  I  have  formed  a  nobler  estimate 
of  your  husband  than  has  his  wife." 

Delia  shuddered. 

"  If  I  were  to  suffer  a  repulse  from  him  I  think  it  would 
kill  me,"  she  said. 

"  Do  not  fear.  I  have  come  to  see  he  is  one  who  dwells 
upon  the  mountains.  If  on  my  knees,  humbly,  in  the  name 
of  my  kind,  I  crave  this  boon,  he  will  grant  it." 


440  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

The  furrows  shone  livid  in  that  grey  face.  Again  Delia 
iplosed  her  eyes. 

"  I  implore  you,  mother,  not  to  incur  so  great  a  danger. 
A  repulse  would  kill  us  both." 

"  There  will  be  no  repulse.  They  who  dwell  upon  the 
mountains  do  not  spurn  those  whom  Fate  casts  at  their 
feet.     He  will  not  deny  me." 

"  But  a  crime  was  committed  against  him.  The  man 
does  not  breathe  who  could  forgive  it." 

By  now  the  look  of  pain  in  the  eyes  of  Delia  had  given 
place  to  pity.  It  seemed  to  her  that  suffering  was  weak- 
ening her  mother's  mind  a  little.  Her  own  implacable 
heart  was  the  only  gauge  she  had  for  that  of  others.  Had 
she  stood  in  the  room  of  her  husband,  and  that  appeal 
had  been  made,  she  knew  that  she  must  have  repulsed  it, 
perhaps  with  contumely.  Nature  would  compel  her  so  to 
act,  however  he  might  strive  to  rise  beyond  her.  Delia, 
too,  had  a  desire  to  achieve  this  godlike  magnanimity,  but 
it  had  already  been  revealed  to  her  how  feeble  is  the  human 
heart  when  in  the  grip  of  those  superhuman  forces  that 
make  for  destiny. 

"  I  beseech  you,  dear  mother,  I  implore  you  to  be  fore- 
warned. Your  request  must  fail  should  you  dare  to  make 
it,  and  failing  must  recoil  upon  you." 

Delia  spoke  with  the  sombre  fervour  of  the  prophetess. 
But  her  almost  wild  solicitude  was  met  by  the  ghost  of 
that  old  indomitable  smile. 

"  I  do  not  fear,  my  dear  one,"  said  Mrs.  Broke ;  and 
now  something  of  the  old  victorious  suavity  seemed  to  be 
returning,  as  in  the  very  throes  of  death  a  certain  placidity 
of  the  spirit  may  arise.  "  I  do  not  fear.  And  when  my 
request  has  been  made  and  has  been  granted,  I  shall  ask 
you  to  fulfil  your  part  as  truly  as  he  will  have  fulfilled 
his." 

Delia  clasped  her  bosom.  Her  eyes  were  darkening. 
The  furrows  still  shone  livid  in  her  mother's  face,  but  now 
it  had  a  look  of  victory. 

"  I  do  not  fear,"  it  said  as  staunchly  as  her  lips  could 
have  framed  the  words. 


CHAPTER  XLV 

THE  LAST  BATTLE 

MRS.  BROKE  left  the  cottage  a  short  time  afterwards 
to  attend  the  family  luncheon.  Delia,  apprised  of 
what  was  shortly  to  occur,  had  declared  her  intention  of 
staying  at  the  cottage  until  the  more  immediate  crisis,  at 
least,  was  past. 

At  the  luncheon  table  were  seated  Broke  and  the  three 
daughters  remaining  to  him.  As  yet  none  of  them  knew 
of  Billy's  death.  The  problem  immediately  before  Mrs. 
Broke  was  the  most  fitting  manner  of  telling  them.  The 
task  must  prove  very  painful ;  and  nothing  but  the  inexor^- 
able  demand  made  by  events  so  rapidly  precipitating  would 
have  induced  her  to  undertake  it  in  her  present  state. 
Even  as  she  sat  at  the  table,  with  a  mind  completely 
obsessed  by  the  subject,  she  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
actual  need  only  applied  to  Broke  himself,  and  that  for  the 
time  being  her  daughters  could  be  left  in  a  merciful 
ignorance. 

No  sooner  was  the  meal  at  an  end  than  she  asked  Broke 
to  grant  her  a  few  minutes  of  his  time. 

"  I  will  not  detain  you,  Edmund,  more  than  a  minute  or 
two." 

Her  tone  was  intended  to  imply  that  she  wished  to  speak 
with  him  on  some  simple  matter.  Accordingly  they  en- 
tered the  library  together.  Their  feet  once  again  on  that 
old  battleground,  where  so  much  of  their  blood  had  been 
shed  already,  she  did  not  fence.  She  had  no  longer  the 
power.  She  must  speak  at  once,  else  her  strength  would 
go.  No  longer  was  she  the  perfectly  balanced  woman  of 
affairs  whose  emotional  nature  was  in  entire  subordination 

441 


442  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

to  the  will.  To  look  at  Broke  as  he  stood  before  her  now, 
and  to  recall  what  he  was  a  few  brief  months  ago,  was  to 
be  conscious  that  she  was  gazing  upon  the  wraith  that 
was  herself. 

"  I  will  be  brief,  Edmund.     Billy  is  dead." 

The  white-headed  man  remained  upright  and  serene, 
except  for  the  hardly  perceptible  stoop  that  had  come  so 
lately  in  the  nobly-spreading  shoulders.  There  was  hardly 
a  sign  of  perception  in  the  seared  face. 

"  He  died  in  the  service  of  his  country.  He  was  killed 
in  action  on  the  second  of  January." 

Broke  made  no  reply. 

"  He  is  the  last  of  you.  Your  name  dies  with  him ;  and 
I  do  not  think  there  is  a  Broke  of  you  all  who  could  have 
asked  that  it  should  end  more  fittingly.  The  last  of  you 
gave  his  life  for  his  country.  That  is  an  ample  requiem, 
even  for  such  a  race  as  yours." 

He  remained  before  her  upright  and  unspeaking.  She 
gazed  upon  him  with  something  of  an  approach  to  her 
old  baffling,  ironical  smile. 

"  He  was  your  son ;  also  he  was  the  last  of  your  name." 

Each  word  was  charged  with  a  relentless  precision. 
They  might  have  had  bitterness  had  they  been  less  impar- 
tial, they  might  have  had  passion  had  they  been  less  defi- 
nitely wrought. 

"  Have  you  not  a  word  to  say,  Edmund  ?  Have  you 
not  a  word  in  which  you  can  answer  me  ?  " 

His  answer  was  a  walk  of  a  mechanical  weariness  out 
of  the  room. 

The  remainder  of  the  winter's  afternoon  had  for  her 
the  strange  concentration,  the  indescribable  mental  density 
of  the  last  hours  of  Joan's  life  on  Christmas  Eve.  There 
was  nothing  she  could  do.  She  could  neither  lie  nor  sit; 
she  could  hardly  stand  still;  she  had  only  just  resolution 
enough  to  resist  the  craving  to  be  perpetually  walking 
about.  She  could  not  write  nor  could  she  read.  She  went 
to  her  bedroom  to  attempt  sleep.  But  there  was  no  chance 
of  that. 

Throughout  those  intolerable  hours  the  need  haunted 


THE  LAST  BATTLE  443 

her  of  keeping  a  full  and  complete  control  of  the,  will. 
If  once  she  let  go  of  that,  if  once  it  faltered  in  this  su- 
preme crisis,  or  fell  short  by  one  iota  of  the  whole  force 
of  its  mature  strength,  she  knew  that  she  was  destroyed. 
Now  that,  after  all  these  long  years,  the  time  wars  at  hand 
when  the  very  highest  demands  were  to  be  made  upon  the 
endurance  of  one  old  and  poor  woman,  she  was  suddenly 
possessed  by  a  harrowing  doubt  of  its  adequacy. 

Already  she  was  cruelly  shaken.  That  morning  at  the 
cottage  she  had  had  an  evidence  that  the  first  bulwark  of 
the  citadel,  the  barrier  of  her  reticence,  had  been  un- 
hinged, had  been  thrown  down.  A  breach  was  left  gaping 
in  her  defences  and  it  must  be  repaired.  All  that  after- 
noon she  bent  her  energies  upon  the  task.  Not  a  fissure 
must  be  in  her  armour  through  which  a  stray  shaft  might 
pierce  to  the  consecrated  thing  that  lay  beyond.  For  in 
spitp  of  all  that  had  gone  before  she  knew  that  the  really 
decisive  conflict  was  yet  to  be. 

If  she  entered  upon  that  ordeal  with  one  weak  spot  in 
her  armour  some  pitiless  shaft  would  seek  it  out,  and  she, 
weak  woman,  would  be  overthrown.  Hour  by  hour  she 
laboured  to  repair  the  breach  in  her  defences  caused  by  the 
threatened  breakdown  of  her  will.  As  one  possessed  she 
laboured.  With  a  contained  fury  she  fought  to  keep  a 
hold  of  that  magic  talisman  the  loss  of  which  meant  total 
destruction  for  her  and  hers. 

The  encounter  with  her  youngest  daughter  had  stripped 
her  bare.  A  grisly  fear  that  she  dare  not  face  was  now 
at  the  back  of  her  mind.  Now  that  the  clothes  of  her 
civilization  had  been  torn  from  her  shuddering  limbs, 
might  not  reason  itself  be  torn  away  also?  Pray  heaven 
that  would  be  left  to  her !  There  was  the  work  of  a  Titan 
before  her.  One  tremor  of  weakness,  and  all  would  be 
lost.  Let  a  nerve  in  that  overdriven  brain  fail  to  respond 
to  the  call,  and  the  Giant  with  whom  she  had  to  grapple 
would  fling  her  to  the  dust  and  press  her  life  out  with  his 
heels. 

The  task  that  confronted  her  must  have  daunted  all 
save  the  indomitable. 


444  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

If  she  yielded  her  Hfe  in  the  attempt  this  Amazon  among 
women  had  made  the  pledge  to  her  maternal  spirit  that 
Broke  should  admit  his  son  and  daughter  back  into  his 
heart.  Alone  and  unaided  she  must  fight  that  grim  feudal 
Titan.  It  had  come  at  last,  as  all  along  it  had  threatened 
to  do,  to  a  question  of  sheer  physical  power. 

In  her  desire  to  maintain  her  strength  for  the  work 
before  it,  she  turned  to  the  medicine  chest,  where  a  nature 
more  emotional  would  have  had  recourse  to  prayer. 
Afterwards  she  tried  to  surrender  herself  to  the  period 
of  inaction  that  was  now  intervening,  the  time  of  compara- 
tive peace  before  the  great  and  final  conflict.  She  changed 
her  morning  dress  and  went  down  to  afternoon  tea  in  the 
drawing-room.  Mercifully  she  was  allowed  to  take  it 
alone.  There  were  no  callers ;  the  girls  were  not  about ; 
and  Broke  had  a  masculine  scorn  of  such  an  effeminate 
beverage. 

She  took  up  a  novel  of  Tolstoy's  in  French  and  tried  to 
read  portions  chosen  at  random.  She  found  she  could 
not.  Then  she  opened  other  volumes  taken  haphazard, 
bearing  an  acute  relation  to  life  and  throwing  sidelights 
upon  it.     Her  success  with  these  was  no  greater. 

Between  six  and  seven  o'clock  her  own  maid,  who  had 
spent  the  afternoon  in  doing  duty  at  the  cottage,  appeared 
in  the  drawing-room  in  her  cloak  and  hat. 

"  Miss  Delia  sent  me  to  tell  you,  ma'am,  that  the  doctor 
has  been  sent  for." 

*'  Thank  you,  Morton,"  said  Mrs.  Broke,  rising  and  lay- 
ing down  her  book.  "  Will  you  please  fetch  me  some 
things ;  and  will  you  also  inquire  whether  Mr.  Broke  is  in 
the  library?" 

"  Mr.  Broke  is  in  the  library,  ma'am,"  said  the  maid, 
returning  a  little  afterwards. 

As  the  maid  helped  her  into  her  cloak  Mrs.  Broke  said: 
"  You  must  eat  some  food,  and  go  back  to  the  cottage  as 
soon  as  you  can." 

She  then  went  to  the  library. 

Broke  was  seated  at  a  table  writing  letters.  As  she 
entered  the  room  he  looked  up  and  paused  to  bite  his  pen 


THE  LAST  BATTLE  445 

vaguely,  as  though  something  of  importance  had  passed 
out  of  his  mind.  He  was  about  to  resume  without  speak- 
ing when  she  said: 

"  I  am  sorry  to  interrupt  you,  Edmund,  but  I  would  ask 
for  a  minute  or  two  of  your  attention." 

He  laid  down  his  pen  and  rose  from  his  chair  in  a 
fashion  of  mechanical  weariness.  As  he  did  so  she  took 
care  that  the  road  to  the  door  was  barred  effectually  by 
her  sombrely  spreading  presence. 

"  I  give  you  my  promise,  Edmund,  that  this  is  the  last 
occasion  I  shall  make  a  reference  to  a  distressing  subject. 
On  that  ground  I  ask  you  to  give  a  patient  hearing  to  what 
I  have  to  say  to  you." 

^  He  stood  without  one  evidence  of  life  in  his  face.  The 
tired  expression  seemed  to  deepen,  but  he  did  not  answer 
her. 

"  There  is  one  thing  you  must  know.     It  is  this " 

He  made  a  sudden  attempt  to  get  past  her  to  the  door. 
She  stepped  in  front  of  him  and  held  him  with  two  cold 
but  firm  hands  on  the  breast  of  his  coat. 

"  It  is  not  for  you  and  me  to  descend  to  the  merely 
futile,  Edmund,"  she  said  in  a  voice  that  had  a  kind  of 
strangled  agony.  "  What  I  have  to  say  is  this :  they  have 
just  sent  to  tell  me  that  the  wife  of  your  son  lies  at  the 
cottage  on  the  hill  with  child.  And  I  hasten  to  inform 
you  of  this  fact  because  I  conceive  it  to  be  my  duty.  You 
are  the  one  person  whom  it  more  immediately  concerns. 
Billy  is  dead,  but  you  will  recognize  that  after  all,  your 
name  may  not  be  extinct.  I  now  ask  that  you  come  with, 
me  to  the  cottage  to  learn  the  fate  that  is  reserved  for 
that  which  is  more  to  you  than  anything  else  in  the  world." 

These  inflexible  words  were  rendered  passionlessly,  but 
as  they  were  spoken  she  never  took  her  eyes  from  those 
of  the  man  before  her.  But  his  own  were  averted.  He 
still  stood  motionless  and  erect,  save  where  the  massive 
shoulders  were  bowed  a  little  as  by  a  succession  of  loads 
that  had  proved  too  heavy  for  them  to  bear. 

"  You  cannot  remain  insensible  to  all  that  this  fact 
means.     A  son  may  be  born  to  your  house  to-night,  and  in 


446  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

that  event  the  loyalty  to  the  name  you  bear  will  force  you 
to  acknowledge  it.  The  very  pride  of  race  that  has 
brought  you  to  this  pass  will  compel  you  to  do  that." 

She  tried  to  peer  into  the  averted  eyes. 

"  Leaving  mere  human  feeling  out  of  the  case,"  she 
went  on  in  a  voice  in  which  the  note  of  emotion  had  been 
suppressed  rigorously,  "  let  us  put  the  matter  on  the  higher 
plane  of  an  impersonal  practical  wisdom.  Do  you  not 
see  that  if  that  one  event  happens  you  will  be  compelled 
to  submit?  Would  it  not  be  more  politic,  do  you  not 
think,  to  accept  the  inevitable  before  you  are  brought  to 
your  knees.  Come  with  me  now  to  the  cottage.  I  ask 
it  in  the  name  of  yourself." 

No  sound  interrupted  the  long  minute  of  silence  that 
fell  between  man  and  wife.  Mrs.  Broke's  tone,  when  next 
she  spoke,  had  acquired  not  only  pity  but  also  a  note  of 
irony. 

"  Unhappy  man,"  she  said  mournfully,  "  can  you  not  see 
how  feeble  is  your  own  strength  when  you  oppose  it  to 
Fate?  Do  you  suppose  you  are  some  mythical  personage 
able  to  impose  your  will  upon  destiny?  To  the  trades- 
people of  Cuttisham  you  are  the  squire  of  Covenden;  to 
your  friends  and  neighbours  you  are  a  person  of  unim- 
peachable respectability;  you  are  a  symbol  of  aristocracy 
in  the  conventional  sense ;  but  what,  pray,  do  you  suppose 
you  stand  for  in  the  sight  of  Heaven?  If  there  is  still  a 
sense  of  proportion  remaining  in  you,  exercise  it,  I  im- 
plore you.  Exercise  it  while  there  is  yet  time.  Before 
this  night  is  over  I  believe  that  the  power  of  free  will  may 
no  longer  be  yours." 

Broke  remained  a  statue.  Not  even  words  of  mockery 
such  as  these  could  pierce  him.  The  unhappy  woman, 
knowing  this  was  their  final  conflict,  continued  to  wage 
battle.  Her  sick  heart  told  her  it  was  already  lost,  but 
she  must  fight  on.  From  mockery  and  derision  she  passed 
to  all  the  other  devices  of  perfervid  appeal.  She  urged 
her  cause  with  a  force  and  a  power  which  proved  that  in 
this  final  extremity  her  mind  retained  its   strength   un- 


THE  LAST  BATTLE  447 

daunted  and  to  the  full.  But  from  first  to  last  Broke  was 
as  a  rock.  No  word  escaped  his  lips.  The  hue  of  death 
was  upon  his  face,  the  inanimation  of  it  was  in  his  heart. 

However,  even  to  the  last  her  supreme  qualities  did  not 
desert  her.  Like  the  staunchest  of  her  race,  she  did  not 
know  when  to  give  in.  She  struggled  on  sickly,  blindly, 
with  a  dogged  valour,  long  after  her  aim  had  lost  its  cer- 
tainty. The  inevitable  loomed  ahead,  a  dark  and  grisly 
bulk,  but  to  submit  to  it  was  impossible  so  long  as  there 
was  any  strength  left  in  her.  And  when  utterly  spent, 
when  sobbing  for  breath,  when  despised  and  broken  at 
last,  she  knew  that  the  limitations  of  the  flesh  were  about 
to  conquer  her,  she  said  finally,  with  hardly  the  same  de- 
gree of  control  in  her  voice,  and  with  something  rather 
overwrought  in  her  manner: 

"  Edmund,  there  is  one  word  more.  If  a  son  is  born  to 
your  house  this  evening  I  would  have  you  remember  that 
he  inherits  a  fortune  of  some  two  hundred  and  seventy 
thousand  pounds.  Do  not  forget  that  the  will  of  old  Mr. 
Breffit  is  made  in  his  favour.  And  I  ask,  are  you  so 
blinded  by  arrogance  that  you  do  not  discern  by  the  light 
of  that  circumstance  that  Heaven  itself  has  intervened  in 
your  affairs  ?  That  money  will  save  your  house  from  ruin, 
and  in  the  event  of  a  man-child  being  given  to  it  to-night, 
will  secure  its  prosperity  through  generations  yet  unborn. 

"  For  the  last  time  I  beseech  you  to  come  with  me  to  the 
cottage  now.  Accept  the  wretched  creature  you  have 
spurned  so  cruelly.  Put  away  your  blindness,  Edmund, 
and  forgive  that  son  this  fortnight  slain.  And  there  is 
that  other  child,  an  outcast  from  your  heart,  whom  you 
will  be  compelled  to  reinstate.  Do  these  things  of  your 
own  free  will.  Do  not  tarry  until  you  become  the  play- 
thing and  the  sport  of  Heaven.  Let  but  another  day  go 
by,  and  you  will  be  a  lost  soul  in  Hades.  I  speak  for  the 
last  time,  Edmund;  I  can  speak  no  more." 

The  unhappy  wife  and  mother  ended  this  strange  speech 
with  flushed  cheeks  and  many  signs  of  purely  physical 
distress.     She  trembled   violently;  there   was   a  curious 


448  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

tightening  of  the  breast  and  throat;  her  breath  came  in 
short,  thick,  gasping  sobs;  her  whole  being  seemed  to  be 
shattered.  Again  she  tried  to  snatch  a  gHmpse  of  that 
averted  face.  For  all  that  she  could  read  she  might  as 
well  have  been  smitten  with  blindness. 

She  withdrew  her  eyes,  and  went  out  of  the  room  with- 
out saying  anything  more ;  and  set  out  for  the  cottage  with 
her  insurgent  thoughts  now  a  nightmare  that  made  a  hor- 
ror in  her  brain.  It  was  a  very  dark  night.  There  was  a 
wet  wind  in  it  that  now  and  then  carried  a  thin  spatter  of 
rain.  It  was  very  mild  for  the  time  of  year.  She  walked 
fast  and  felt  a  sensation  of  physical  relief  when  an  occa- 
sional spray  of  rain  was  dashed  in  her  face.  It  was  burn- 
ing with  such  intensity  that  when  these  tears  out  of 
heaven  were  flung  upon  it,  an  effect  was  made  in  her 
overwrought  mind  of  water  hissing  on  a  white-hot  sur- 
face. 

In  her  heart  was  the  clear  conviction  of  failure,  and 
something  worse.  She  had  staked  her  all;  it  had  been 
swept  away;  and  she  was  totally  bankrupt.  All  she  had 
had  of  will,  of  mother-wit,  of  capacity  for  suffering,  had 
been  matched  against  the  unreason  of  this  man,  and  it 
had  treated  them  as  nought.  All  hope  was  gone.  Noth- 
ing was  remaining  now  for  him,  nor  for  herself. 

As  she  walked  at  a  furious  pace  to  the  cottage,  with  the 
gushes  of  rain  bringing  to  her  the  only  kind  of  relief  that 
was  possible  now,  the  haunted  woman  saw  receding  back- 
wards in  front  of  her  into  the  black  wall  of  the  night  step 
by  step  as  she  moved  towards  it,  a  huge  ungainly  shape. 
Once  before,  and  for  an  instant  only,  had  she  caught  a 
glimpse  of  this  hideous  phantom.  It  was  in  the  night  that 
followed  her  interview  with  her  husband  after  her  daugh- 
ter's flight.  This  evening,  however,  the  horror  was  more 
vivid.  With  jaunty  and  spasmodic  gyrations  it  backed 
before  her  into  the  darkness,  receding  step  by  step  as  she 
pressed  on  and  on.  But  odd  and  misshapen  as  was  this 
mocking  shape,  there  was  something  about  it  that  made 
her  think  only  of  one.  And  once  or  twice  as  it  emerged 
for  a  moment  visible  out  of  a  wrack  of  fast-flying  clouds 


THE  LAST  BATTLE  449 

and  wind-shaken  trees,  she  strained  to  see  its  face.  It  was 
grinning  at  her  in  the  guise  of  a  beast's,  but  the  face  was 
unmistakable. 

Her  soul  grew  faint  when  she  saw  it  first.  She  shut  her 
eyes,  and  reopened  them  to  find  that  the  inhuman  face  was 
again  blotted  out  by  the  clouds  and  the  trees.  But  at  the 
end  of  the  avenue,  in  a  short  interval  of  pasture,  it  was 
there  again.  It  was  merged  almost  immediately  in  the 
wall  of  a  farm  building.  Suddenly,  rounding  a  comer, 
the  illuminated  white  blind  of  a  farm  labourer's  cottage 
flashed  into  view.  With  a  piercing  sense  of  relief  she 
knocked  at  the  door  and  was  able  to  borrow  a  lantern. 

With  that  to  bear  her  on  her  way  the  monster  grew  less 
visible,  but  nothing  could  disperse  it  altogether.  She  had 
waked  to  a  discovery.  It  seemed  to  her  now  that  she 
had  lain  these  many  years  in  the  bosom  of  a  wild  beast 
formed  ironically  in  the  image  of  a  Christian  Englishman. 
The  knowledge  made  her  reel  and  almost  cry  aloud  to  the 
wind  in  agony. 

The  horror  in  her  brain  had  already  caused  one  fact  to 
stand  out  very  clear.  It  was  one  that  she  had  foreseen 
when  she  entered  upon  that  last  interview.  But  now  the 
realization  of  it  was  creeping  through  her  veins  with  the 
deadly  stealth  of  a  drug.  It  was  convulsing  her  heart. 
They  could  be  man  and  wife  no  more. 

In  all  that  long  term  of  their  conjugal  intercourse  this 
was  the  first  breach.  Such  a  pair  of  temperate  and  emi- 
nently sane  persons  had  known  how  to  exalt  the  business 
of  living  together  into  a  symphony  of  companionship. 
Their  good  breeding  had  enabled  them  to  draw  the  nicest 
distinctions  in  the  art  of  give-and-take.  As  far  as  it  is 
given  to  one  human  being  to  interpret  another  human 
being.  Broke  and  his  wife  had  known  how  to  do  it.  They 
had  been  very  much  to  one  another.  They  had  lived  in  the 
paradise  of  a  very  perfect  harmony.  As  she  walked,  how- 
ever, in  this  gross  darkness  the  thirty-years  wife  of  his 
bosom  saw  all  that  was  past.  This  exquisite  communion 
had  been  wrenched  asunder.  The  same  perfect  loyalty 
could  never  be  again.     It  would  be  out  of  the  question  to 


450  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

yield  that  fidelity  to  one  who  had  become  so  peremptorily 
embodied  in  her  mind  as  nothing  less  than  a  devil.  A 
grisly  accident  had  pulled  aside  the  veil.  For  thirty  years, 
incredible  as  the  fact  might  seem,  she  had  been  deceived. 
She  v^ould  be  deceived  no  more.  And  yet  she  might  have 
gone  to  her  grave  in  this  deception  had  not  a  sardonic  im- 
pulse overcome  High  Heaven. 


CHAPTER  XL VI 

AT  THE   COTTAGE  ON   THE   HILL 

IT  was  a  relief  to  the  poor  woman  to  reach  the  cottage. 
Here  was  surcease  for  a  time  from  the  pangs  her  out- 
raged instincts  were  wreaking  upon  her.  The  solace  it 
afforded  was  scanty  indeed,  but  anything  was  to  be  wel- 
comed rather  than  she  should  be  cast  solitary  upon  the 
mercy  of  the  night.  There  was  human  companionship  at 
least  in  the  little  place;  also  there  were  new  and  strange 
excitements  to  apply  their  sedatives.  What  was  about  to 
occur  presently  might  prove  unendurable  too,  but  any  di- 
version of  her  sufferings  brought  relief  of  a  kind. 

Dr.  Walker  had  arrived  already.  He  was  as  gruff  as 
usual  and  as  grimly  cheerful.  He  received  Mrs.  Broke 
with  something  in  the  nature  of  a  rude  humour  in  his  eye. 

"  You  are  a  wonderful  sex,"  he  said,  "  for  the  climac- 
terics. You  will  not  be  denied  your  births,  marriages,  and 
funerals.     The  place  is  infested  with  women." 

"  Emotion  is  the  food  on  which  we  thrive,"  said  Mrs. 
Broke.  "  Men,  I  know,  are  different.  I  believe  they  have 
a  positive  dislike  of  the  precious  stuff  upon  which  we  wax 
and  grow  fat." 

Her  words  were  accompanied  by  a  laugh  which  some- 
how went  against  the  doctor's  grain. 

"  I  shall  look  to  see  the  grandfather  here  before  the 
night  is  over,"  said  Dr.  Walker  in  his  blunt  fashion. 
"  What  a  rare  stroke  of  luck  if  it  be  a  boy !  " 

"  I  think  a  little  good  fortune,  one  way  or  another,  is 
about  due  to  us." 

"  Yes,  I  think  it  is." 

He  looked  into  the  face  of  the  woman  before  him  with 
great  keenness.    That  laugh  of  hers  jarred  more  than  ever 

451 


452  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

upon  his  ear.  Also  he  saw  there  other  things  that  jarred 
upon  him. 

"  I  should  like  you  to  go  away  for  a  bit,"  he  said.  "  Go 
away  to-morrow  to  the  Mediterranean  for  a  month  or  two. 
Take  Mr.  Broke.  You  are  both  a  bit  run  down.  You 
want  change  and  a  rest.  You  have  been  going  through  a 
bit  too  much  both  of  you." 

"  We  shall  see,"  she  said,  gently  putting  him  off. 
*'  What  do  you  think  of  the  poor  thing  upstairs  ?  " 

Dr.  Walker  compressed  his  lips. 

"  She  is  a  very  frail  bit  of  a  thing,"  he  said. 

"  Is  she  not  just  the  wick  of  a  farthing  candle  that 
might  easily  go  out  ?  " 

"  It  is  surprising  how  seldom  they  do.  Dame  Nature, 
after  all,  is  a  prudent  soul.  I  have  seen  her  keep  many  a 
faint  candle  burning.  When  the  pinch  comes  we  can 
look  to  her  to  make  a  great  effort  for  her  children." 

"  But  I  fear  for  this  poor  child  on  account  of  her  hus- 
band.    She  has  a  terrible  prepossession." 

"  Yes,  that  is  our  difficulty.  Nothing  could  be  more 
unfortunate.     But  I  think  we  can  be  of  good  faith." 

With  this  final  expression  of  the  doctor's  belief  in  the 
mighty  mother,  the  sacred  rites  began  upstairs  and  down. 
Soft-footed  women  flitted  hither  and  thither  with  flushed 
and  grave  faces.  Many  were  the  mysterious  whispers  that 
were  interchanged,  many  the  mysterious  orders  given. 
The  nurse  became  a  personage  indeed.  The  bedroom,  the 
sitting-room,  the  back  kitchen  trembled  at  her  eagle 
glance.  When  she  lifted  up  her  autocratic  nose,  and 
sniffed  the  air,  and  declared  "  that  something  was  burn- 
ing "  she  verged  upon  the  sublime.  It  was  not  so  much 
that  a  reference  was  conveyed  to  the  array  of  shawls, 
blankets  and  long  clothes  which  had  been  ranged  on  the 
backs  of  chairs  in  front  of  the  sitting-room  fire,  as  the  de- 
tachment of  mind  that  was  argued  in  this  perception  of  a 
mundane  detail  in  the  stress  of  an  event  that  made  an 
epoch  in  the  life  of  the  race.  It  was  as  much  an  evidence 
of  a  vast  experience,  and  as  fully  betrayed  the  "  Old  Par- 
liamentary Hand,"  as  the  incredible  coolness  of  the  late 


AT  THE  COTTAGE  ON  THE  HILL        453 

Mr.  Gladstone,  who  was  wont  to  startle  the  neophytes  of 
the  British  Parliament  by  producing  a  volume  of  Homer 
in  crises  hardly  less  momentous  in  the  history  of  nations. 

These  orgies  continued  to  go  on,  and  were  carried  to 
great  lengths.  Queer  foods  and  invalid  concoctions  ap- 
peared on  the  table  in  the  little  sitting-room,  and  strange 
emblems  of  science  as  applied  to  medicine  came  on  it  too. 
The  cenacle  of  women  flitting  round  them  grew  even  more 
rapt  in  its  responsiveness  to  the  exigencies  of  the  moment, 
when  first  the  doctor  and  then  the  nurse  went  upstairs 
with  silent  tread  and  solemn. 

It  happened  at  a  time  when  Mrs.  Broke  and  Delia  stood 
a  little  apart  in  an  angle  formed  by  the  wall  and  the  chim- 
neypiece,  helping  one  another  in  the  manipulation  of  linen, 
and  Miss  Sparrow  was  a  few  paces  from  them  holding  a 
saucepan  of  milk  over  the  fire,  that  the  outer  door  was  seen 
to  revolve  on  its  hinges  in  a  manner  so  soundless  that  it 
looked  like  mystery.  In  the  next  instant  the  wind  swept 
a  gush  of  rain  into  the  cosy  room.  Obscure  sounds  of 
shuffling  feet  came  with  it.  The  door  was  opened  wider, 
and  the  dank  figure  of  a  man  was  outlined  in  the  gloom  of 
the  threshold.  Those  who  saw  this  strange  apparition 
through  the  tempered  glow  of  the  lamp  and  the  firelight 
knew  it  for  that  of  a  man  large  and  burly.  There  was  an 
odd  stoop  in  the  shoulders.  His  hair  was  almost  white 
and  his  face  was  grey. 

He  lurched  into  the  room  with  his  hands  thrust  out  be- 
fore him  in  the  manner  of  one  who  is  blind,  or  of  one 
groping  in  a  dark  room.  But  the  eyes  seemed  to  have  not 
a  spark  of  consciousness.  It  was  as  though  he  knew  not 
where  he  was  or  what  he  did.  He  groped  his  way  past 
the  table  to  the  most  distant  corner  of  the  room,  where 
there  chanced  to  be  an  empty  chair. 

Spellbound  the  three  witnesses  stood  to  watch.  They 
were  fascinated  by  the  obtrusion  of  this  uncanny  presence. 
It  was  not  until  the  man  sat  down  with  an  audible  heavi- 
ness on  the  chair  in  the  corner,  plucked  from  his  head  the 
square-crowned  felt  hat  from  which  the  wet  was  running 
m  a  stream,  and  laid  it  on  the  floor  beside  his  box-cloth 


454  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

gaiters,  and  then  proceeded  to  rest  his  chin  on  his  hand 
which  rested  in  turn  on  the  knob  of  an  ash  stick,  that  the 
power  of  volition  returned  to  those  who  saw. 

The  old  aunt  was  the  first  to  recover  it.  She  left  the 
saucepan  of  milk,  which  was  already  beginning  to  bubble 
on  the  fire,  and  crept  with  a  stealthy  terror  to  the  side 
of  Mrs.  Broke.  Very  timidly  she  took  hold  of  her  dress. 
It  was  like  the  act  of  a  child  when  it  really  believes  that  a 
bear  or  a  giant  has  walked  into  the  nursery.  Shuddering 
in  every  vein  she  pressed  her  face  against  the  ample  person 
of  her  protectress;  and  when  of  a  sudden  the  neglected 
milk  surged  in  the  saucepan  and  boiled  over  with  a  mighty 
hiss  into  the  fire,  she  fixed  a  more  convulsive  clutch  upon 
Mrs.  Broke. 

Delia's  act  was  of  a  different  nature.  When  by  force  of 
gazing  the  fact  permeated  her  numbly  that  the  man  who 
groped  his  way  into  the  little  room  was  her  father,  she 
tore  her  eyes  from  that  huddled  shape  in  the  very  instant 
that  she  realized  who  it  was.  Without  hurry,  with  a  kind 
of  deliberation  even,  she  went  at  once  into  a  small  ad- 
joining room,  where  the  maids  her  mother  had  sent  from 
the  house  were  doing  various  duties. 

Some  little  time  passed  before  the  old  woman  was  suffi- 
ciently mistress  of  herself  to  loose  her  convulsive  grip  of 
Mrs.  Broke.  Even  when  ruefully  she  proceeded  to  pick 
the  burning  saucepan  off  the  fire,  she  was  still  trembling 
violently.  Not  once  as  she  refilled  the  saucepan  with  milk 
from  a  bowl  that  stood  on  the  table  did  she  dare  to  let  her 
eyes  stray  in  the  direction  of  the  ogre  seated  opposite  to 
her,  with  his  chin  resting  on  his  stick. 

Nor  did  Mrs.  Broke  allow  her  eyes  to  stray  towards  that 
presence.  Indeed,  the  power  of  vision  seemed  no  longer 
to  be  hers.  Something  had  happened,  but  what  it  was  she 
did  not  know.  Broke  was  in  that  room,  but  there  was 
nothing  to  tell  her  how  he  had  come  or  what  had  brought 
him  there. 

In  a  little  while  she  became  aware  of  another  pregnant 
fact.  Delia  had  quitted  the  room.  That  was  a  simple, 
definite,  lucid  piece  of  knowledge ;  there  was  a  kind  of  re- 


AT  THE  COTTAGE  ON  THE  HILL        455 

f reshment  in  its  freedom  from  complexity.  It  was  a  thing 
she  could  understand;  it  cost  neither  blood  nor  tears  to 
acquire  its  meaning.  Here  at  least  was  a  thing  for  reason 
to  apprehend  without  being  overthrown  in  the  process. 

She  went  to  the  next  room  where  Delia  was.  It  caused 
a  nerve  to  jump  in  her  to  find  that  the  face  of  her  youngest 
daughter  had  relapsed  into  that  hardness  which  tran- 
scended even  the  coldness  of  passion  which  that  morning 
had  struck  her  to  her  knees.  Now,  however,  she  had 
passed  beyond  that  range  of  emotion  of  which  fear  may 
be  a  phase.  All  that  she  felt,  all  that  she  saw,  all  that  she 
did  had  lost  the  sanction  of  personality,  the  impetus  of 
entity.  Very  dimly,  if  at  all,  did  she  know  w^hat  ends 
were  about  to  be  served,  or  by  the  aid  of  what  universal 
principle  events  were  shaping  themselves. 

"  Delia,  I  hold  you  to  your  promise." 

"  There  was  a  condition  under  which  it  was  to  be  en- 
tered upon,"  said  Delia,  with  sombre  moumfulness. 

"  Yes,  I  will  fulfil  it." 

She  asked  one  of  the  maids  to  procure  writing  materials 
for  her  use.     She  then  said  to  the  other : 

"  Please  go  back  to  the  house  as  quickly  as  you  can, 
tell  Reynolds  to  have  the  horses  put  in  the  brougham,  and 
you  are  to  return  with  it  at  once." 

As  soon  as  the  maid  had  gone  she  sat  down  and  wrote 
the  following: 

"  In  the  name  of  your  wife  I  ask  you  to  come  here  at 
once  in  the  company  of  the  bearer. — Jane  Sophia  Broke." 

As  her  mother  was  in  the  act  of  addressing  the  envelope 
a  look  of  pitying  incredulity  came  into  Delia's  face. 

In  the  interval  of  rather  more  than  half  an  hour  which 
passed  before  the  brougham  arrived,  not  a  word  was 
spoken  by  any  of  the  persons  assembled  in  the  two  small 
rooms  on  the  ground-floor.  That  strange  arrival  had  op- 
oppressed  the  atmosphere  with  a  curious  density.  The 
knowledge  that  a  man  with  a  grey  face  was  sitting  in  that 
dark  corner  with  his  chin  resting  on  his  stick  seemed  to 


456  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

hold  them  in  thrall.  At  last  there  was  a  sound  of  wheels 
outside  in  the  rain,  and  a  little  afterwards  the  maid  and 
Reynolds  the  coachman  came  with  blinking  eyelids  into 
the  brightness  of  the  room. 

Mrs.  Broke  gave  the  letter  to  Reynolds. 

"  I  want  you  to  take  this  to  the  shop  of  Mr.  Porter  the 
bookseller  at  Cuttisham.  It  is  a  small  shop  in  North 
Street,  a  few  doors  out  of  the  High  Street.  Please  ask 
for  Mr.  Alfred  Porter,  and  give  him  this  letter  yourself 
personally.  He  will  return  with  you  here  to  this  cottage ; 
and  please  let  me  urge  upon  you,  Reynolds,  that  this  is  a 
matter  of  very  great  importance." 

As  Reynolds  went  forth  upon  his  mission  the  look  of 
pitying  incredulity  was  seen  upon  the  face  of  Delia  for  the 
second  time. 

Silence  came  again.  Delia  remained  in  the  inner  room 
out  of  the  sight  of  her  father,  whose  own  posture  had  not 
changed.  Presently  Mrs.  Broke  ascended  to  the  cham- 
ber above ;  and  when  she  did  so.  Miss  Sparrow,  not  daring 
to  be  left  alone  with  that  uncanny  presence  in  the  corner, 
deserted  the  baby-linen  and  fled  to  Delia  for  security. 
Soon  afterwards  Mrs.  Broke  came  downstairs  again  and 
beckoned  to  the  old  woman,  but  did  not  speak.  She  then 
gathered  the  articles  in  front  of  the  sitting-room  fire  into 
an  armful,  and  carried  them  upstairs.  The  old  woman 
followed  meekly  in  her  wake. 


CHAPTER  XLVII 

THE  TWO  VOICES 

IN  the  tiny  sitting-room  there  came  another  interval 
devoid  of  sound,  devoid  of  incident.  Broke  remained 
in  the  corner  huddled  into  a  grey  mass,  with  his  chin  still 
propped  on  his  stick.  He  remained  motionless  and  alone. 
Not  once  had  he  moved.  His  eyes  were  wide,  but  ap- 
peared to  be  glazed  a  faded  violet  colour,  like  those  of  a 
dog  that  is  blind.  They  stared  like  eyes  of  glass  out  of  a 
statue ;  for  all  their  look  of  intensity  they  could  see  noth- 
ing. The  sounds  of  a  small  clock  ticking  on  the  chimney- 
piece  were  to  be  heard  distinctly,  but  to  Broke  they  were 
not  audible.  They  were  merged  in  the  beating  of  his 
heart.  Everything  was  very  still  and  vague.  There  were 
occasional  fierce  gushes  of  rain  driven  by  the  wind  against 
the  window  panes  of  the  cottage.  He  mistook  them  for 
waves  of  blood  breaking  over  the  walls  of  his  mind.  Out- 
side, in  the  abyss  of  the  winter  evening,  there  was  not  a 
star.  There  was  nothing,  not  so  much  as  a  dark  pool  of 
water  or  the  shadow  of  a  gaunt  tree,  by  which  time  and 
place  could  be  identified. 

The  night  was  a  void,  but  one  not  so  great  as  that  of 
the  spirit  of  the  man  who  sat  in  the  corner  of  the  bright 
room  with  his  chin  on  his  stick.  Time  and  place  had 
even  less  embodiment  in  him.  He  might  be  on  earth  a 
withered  oak  tree,  a  fallen  leaf,  a  blade  of  grass  bruised 
to  death  by  the  hand  of  winter ;  or  he  might  be  in  space,  a 
disembodied  spirit  wafted  to  Elysium  along  the  clouds  of 
eternity.  There  was  not  a  shade  of  recognition  remaining 
in  him  of  a  sense  of  entity.  He  had  no  familiar  evidence 
of  life,  hardly  of  being.  He  was  a  nebulous  mechanism, 
whose  brain  was  a  sea,  whose  clay  was  a  fire ;  an  impotent 

4S7 


458  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

mechanism  compounded  mysteriously,  irrelevantly,  of  the 
two  prime  elements,  wrought,  with  equal  mystery  and 
irrelevance  no  less,  into  a  crude  bodiless  shape  whose  end 
and  beginning  was  darkness  and  torment.  Beyond  that 
elemental  knowledge  there  was  nothing  to  know. 

Suddenly  a  far-off  sound  was  heard  in  some  remote 
purlieu  of  his  being.  It  surmounted  the  ticking  of  the 
clock,  it  surmounted  the  mighty  pulsations  of  his  heart,  it 
surmounted  the  spatter  of  the  rain  against  the  windows 
which  he  still  mistook  for  waves  of  blood  breaking  over 
the  walls  of  his  mind.  It  was  a  wail  as  of  a  wind  drawn 
fine,  a  wind  crooning  across  the  fields  of  space  from  the 
outer  verge  of  eternity.  It  was  so  faint  that  it  seemed 
to  have  crept  for  seons  across  the  sterile  wastes  of  time. 
It  rose  and  fell,  but  repetition  did  not  make  it  more  real. 
It  was  uncanny,  eerie,  and  monotonous ;  it  made  an  effect 
of  unreason  in  a  condition  of  exquisite  sanity. 

As  this  little  voice  issued  from  the  back  of  the  infinite, 
without  coming  nearer  into  human  ken,  it  seemed  to  ac- 
quire a  certain  quality.  Time  and  space  became  possible ; 
strange,  external  things  were  slowly  shadowed  forth.  A 
dull  yellow  disc  appeared  before  his  eyes.  At  first  he 
thought  it  was  the  moon,  but  it  seemed  too  bright;  and 
then  the  sun,  but  it  did  not  seem  bright  enough.  He  then 
grew  alive  to  the  fact  that  it  was  a  lamp  on  a  table.  He 
grasped  the  knowledge  that  he  was  sitting  in  a  room. 
Soon  he  realized  that  the  illusion  he  had  had  of  a  dis- 
embodied spirit  reclining  upon  a  cloud  had  been  produced 
by  his  chin  resting  upon  his  stick. 

It  was  now  that  another  element  was  introduced  into  this 
frantic  struggle  to  re-establish  a  sense  of  entity.  The  faint 
voice  that  had  made  it  possible  had  been  weird  and  eerie 
and  not  unsolemn,  such  was  its  suggestion  of  having  jour- 
neyed long  through  time  and  having  travelled  far.  But 
now  there  rose  up  a  competing  voice  that  was  neither 
weird  nor  solemn.  Its  effect  was  so  ridiculous  that  it 
would  not  have  been  tolerated  in  a  harlequinade.  It  was 
the  lusty  crying  of  a  child. 

At  such  a  moment  the  intrusion  of  such  a  voice  was 


THE  TWO  VOICES  459 

obscene.  That  robust,  that  absolutely  common  and  lucid 
sound  in  conjunction  with  the  wail  right  away  from  the 
outer  verge  of  eternity  was  too  incongruous  for  reason  to 
accept.  It  was  altogether  beyond  bathos,  it  was  mockery. 
It  was  a  paradox  invented  by  a  devil  to  affront  a  logical 
and  delicate  human  ear.  Reason  was  staggered,  but  the 
hideous  duet  gained  in  power.  The  wail  still  rose  and  fell, 
crooning  in  mid-air  from  the  back  of  eternity;  the  infant 
cries  grew  more  lusty  to  the  ear.  Harrowed  by  a  sense 
of  being  in  hell,  the  listener  made  a  superhuman  effort  to 
hold  on  to  his  wits.  He  was  able  at  last,  in  the  manner 
of  a  sleeper  who  struggles  to  awake  in  the  midst  of  foul 
dreams,  to  project  his  consciousness  beyond  the  flaming 
disc  of  yellow  light.  He  was  able  to  make  out  his  wife 
beyond  it,  seated  in  shadow.  She  had  a  bundle  in  her 
arms. 

The  sight  of  her,  however,  did  nothing  to  lessen  his 
sense  of  torment.  The  awful  duet  still  went  on.  It  grew 
more  and  more  intolerable.  The  one  noise,  certainly  the 
more  human,  the  more  natural,  seemed  to  come  from  the 
bundle  his  wife  held  in  her  arms.  It  was  shrill,  lusty, 
contiguous,  but  at  least  it  had  its  place  in  nature.  But 
why  it  should  pit  itself  against  that  other  sound  he  did 
not  know.  The  effect  of  them  blended  in  chorus  was  not 
to  be  borne,  it  was  horrible  beyond  belief.  The  endurance 
of  no  human  person  could  sanction  such  an  incongruity. 
If  that  menace  to  sanity  did  not  cease  soon  he  felt  he  must 
go  mad. 

Do  what  he  would,  however,  the  two  voices  continued 
to  make  his  reason  totter.  There  was  a  quality  in  that 
high  and  thin  wail  which  had  struck  the  first  effect  of 
unreason  in  him,  which  yet  so  strangely  had  restored  to 
him  the  kingdom  of  the  mind,  that  was  not  to  be  compared 
to  any  known  thing  in  earth  or  heaven.  It  had  an  analogy 
to  winds  far-off,  rippling  the  branches  of  the  eerie  forests 
of  the  moon.  It  was  like  a  mild  little  voice  hanging  in 
mid-air,  a  dryad  mourning.  Now  and  then  the  note  had 
something  in  common  with  the  cry  of  an  animal.  And 
yet  in  essence  it  was  like  none  of  these.     For  the  prevail- 


46o  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

ing  quality  was  something  metallic,  something  mechanical, 
which  seemed  to  invest  the  very  core  of  these  cadences: 
an  ordered  recurrence,  a  regulated  coming  and  going,  a 
rising  and  falling,  an  incredibly  even  repetition  of  its  tim- 
bre that  had  nothing  in  common  with  the  human,  the 
divine,  the  natural,  the  supernatural,  so  far  as  the  senses 
of  man  had  been  evolved  to  apprehend  them. 

Broke's  bleeding  nerves  recoiled  from  it  in  horror  again 
and  again. 

"  It  is  like  a  damned  machine ! "  they  seemed  to  com- 
plain to  one  another.    *'  It  is  like  a  damned  machine !  " 


CHAPTER  XLVIII 

THE   SURVIVAL  OF   THE   FITTEST!      THE  CURTAIN   FALLS 

THAT,  indeed,  was  the  only  thing  it  could  be  said  to 
resemble.  It  was  a  piece  of  diabolical  clockwork. 
It  was  an  elaborate  yet  brutal  sequence  of  discords,  a 
symphony  of  music  as  they  might  understand  it  in  hell. 
Remote  as  it  was  it  could  overthrow  all  other  sounds. 
The  bundle  that  was  so  near  emitted  natural  infant  cries ; 
but  distinct  as  they  were  they  could  not  drown  those 
weaker  sounds  that  were  so  far  away. 

The  duet  between  the  two  voices  went  on  and  on. 
Broke  again  ceased  to  be  [conscious  of  anything  save  the 
fashion  of  their  blending.  It  grew  higher  and  higher ;  it 
rose  more  insistent;  but  the  thinner  note  was  ever  dom- 
inant. After  a  time  the  nearer  one  grew  less.  The  hu- 
man cries  from  the  bundle  subsided  into  a  troubled  ex- 
haustion. Languorous  sobs  were  shaken  among  and  dis- 
persed in  the  strident  outcry;  gradually  it  grew  inter- 
mittent, presently  it  ceased.  The  unholy  wail  suspended 
in  the  firmament  had  nothing  then  to  dispute  its  empire. 
Again  Broke  had  the  desire  to  crush  his  hands  into  his 
ears.  He  could  hardly  sit  in  his  chair.  At  last  he  could 
endure  it  no  more.  He  jerked  up  his  head  in  the  startled 
manner  of  a  stag  when  it  catches  the  wind  of  its  hunters. 

"  That  damned  noise  ? "  he  demanded  imperiously. 
"What  is  it?" 

"  That  is  the  mother." 

The  reply  caused  a  faint  ray  of  light  to  dawn  in  his  face. 
His  hands  froze  tighter  to  the  knob  of  his  stick.  He  set- 
tled his  chin  more  firmly  upon  it. 

The  nurse  came  down  the  stairs  softly.  Mrs.  Broke 
gave  the  stupefied  bundle  of  life  into  her  arms.  As  she 
did  so  the  nurse  shook  her  head. 

461 


462  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  Poor  thing !  "  she  whispered  dolefully. 

Tears  gathered  slowly,  one  at  a  time,  in  her  rather  hard 
eyes. 

The  sound  of  wheels  was  heard  again  outside  in  the 
rain.  Mrs.  Broke  raised  her  head  and  stood  erect.  Her 
listening  ears  could  detect,  even  through  the  tumult  of 
the  night,  the  creakings  of  a  vehicle  as  it  drew  up  at  the 
gate  of  the  little  garden.  She  strained  to  catch  a  footfall 
on  the  gravel  path.  The  old  faintly  ironical  smile  flitted 
round  her  lips  for  an  instant,  but  in  the  next  her  face  had 
grown  as  haggard  as  that  of  Broke's.  Under  the  lamp 
it  shone'  livid.  She  moved  to  the  door  and  opened  it.  A 
spatter  of  rain  was  cast  suddenly  upon  her  face  as  in  the 
case  of  a  few  hours  before,  but  the  engines  of  her  heart 
and  brain  no  longer  needed  it  for  refreshment.  There 
was  a  high  exaltation  in  her.  She  stood  bareheaded,  and 
shaded  with  her  hand  the  rain  and  gross  darkness  from 
her  eyes  and  peered  into  the  storm  to  discern  the  outlines 
of  the  form  she  had  come  to  seek. 

She  called  a  name  softly,  but  there  came  no  response. 
It  was  too  dark  to  make  out  what  was  at  the  bottom  of 
the  garden.  There  was  not  a  sound  except  the  hiss  of  the 
rain  and  the  mournful  noise  of  the  wind  sobbing  and 
screaming  in  the  upper  branches  of  the  wood  behind  and 
above  the  cottage.  She  continued  to  stand  expectant,  but 
no  form  appeared  before  her  on  the  garden  path.  She 
called  the  name  again,  but  she  stood  alone. 

At  last  was  borne  to  her  the  sound  of  a  foot  on  the 
gravel.  Almost  at  once  a  vague  form  was  evolved  out  of 
the  night.  A  man  with  his  great-coat  turned  up  to  his 
ears,  and  the  peak  of  his  cap  pulled  down  over  his  face 
until  only  the  tip  of  his  chin  and  nose  were  visible,  con- 
fronted the  woman  on  the  threshold.  He  was  as  gaunt 
as  a  drenched  sparrow,  the  water  was  dripping  from  his 
shoulders. 

"  I  knew  you  would  come,"  the  woman  breathed  softly. 

"  I  couldn't  find  the  gate  in  the  darkness.  And  the  wind 
and  rain  are  horrible." 

She  hastened  to  lead  him  within  and  close  the  door,  for 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  THE  FITTEST        463 

every  moment  the  wind  was  threatening  to  extinguish  the 
lamp  on  the  table. 

The  man  moved  quickly  into  the  light  and  wiped  his  feet 
very  carefully  on  the  door-mat.  He  took  off  his  cap,  and 
his  eyes  fell  on  the  nurse,  who  was  rocking  the  infant  in 
her  arms,  with  an  occasional  tear  dripping  from  her  eyes 
on  to  the  blanket  in  which  the  child  was  wrapped. 

Mrs.  Broke  led  the  man  through  the  small  room  to  the 
still  smaller  room  beyond  in  which  Delia  was  seated.  In 
his  progress  he  did  not  appear  to  notice  that  a  grey  bun- 
dle of  a  man  was  seated  in  the  farthest  corner  of  the 
room  through  which  he  had  passed. 

Upon  the  man's  entrance  Delia  rose,  but  he  did  not  look 
at  her. 

Mrs.  Broke  closed  the  door  that  communicated  with  the 
other  room. 

**  You  must  take  off  your  wet  overcoat,"  she  said. 

"  Thank  you,  I  will." 

Delia  helped  him  to  remove  it.  Her  hands  were  very 
cold,  her  face  was  the  colour  of  snow.  During  the  mo- 
ment in  which  she  helped  him  to  take  off  his  coat  her  face 
changed  to  scarlet  and  then  as  suddenly  grew  white  again. 
Her  eyes  grew  dark  with  bewilderment.  Her  husband 
kept  his  eyes  averted  from  her,  although  there  was  an 
instant  in  which  he  took  her  arm  in  a  grip  that  had  a 
slightly  authoritative  caress  in  it. 

"  Won't  you  sit  down  ?  "  said  Mrs.  Broke. 

"  No,  I  think  not." 

She  found  that  his  voice  and  the  measure  of  his  self- 
effacement  were  making  her  strong.  They  had  seemed  to 
banish  any  suggestion  of  abnormality  in  their  meeting. 

"  I  must  first  make  the  purpose  clear  for  which  I  sent 
for  you  this  evening.  But  before  I  do  so  let  me  thank 
you  for  coming.  I  can  only  say  that  had  I  not  formed 
the  highest  opinion  of  your  character  that  one  person  can 
form  of  another's,  I  could  not  have  asked  you  to  come 
here." 

The  man  bent  his  face  a  little.  A  look  of  pain  showed 
upon  the  wrung  forehead. 


464  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

"  My  object  in  asking  you  to  come  here  to-night  is  that 
you  may  undertake  the  task  of  reconciling  a  father  and 
daughter.  It  is  by  you  alone  that  it  can  be  done.  The 
grave  crime  that  was  committed  against  you,  your  wife 
cannot  forgive.  But  at  the  entreaty  of  her  mother,  she 
has  consented  to  make  your  perfect  magnanimity  the  sole 
condition  of  her  forgiveness.  You  have  only  to  withhold 
it ;  you  have  only  to  make  one  reservation ;  you  have  only 
to  impose  a  single  condition,  and  they  can  never  be  recon- 
ciled. If  you  are  incapable  of  such  an  action  I  shall  not 
respect  you  less ;  if  it  is  given  to  you  to  achieve  it  you  will 
have  the  thanks  of  a  woman,  old  and  poor.  Perhaps  I 
have  no  right  to  ask  it;  perhaps  it  is  more  than  one  per- 
son should  ask  of  another.  But  as  a  wife  and  a  mother 
I  ask  it.  I  ask  it  in  the  name  of  the  children  that  may 
one  day  be  yours.  As  an  old  and  poor  woman  who  has 
borne  many,  I  ask  it  on  my  knees." 

In  this  appeal  was  an  abasement  so  complete  that  it 
brought  tears  to  the  man's  eyes.  Without  a  glance  at  him 
to  whom  the  appeal  was  made  the  unhappy  woman  cov- 
ered her  face  with  her  hands.  There  was  a  silence  in 
which  she  stood  shivering,  in  which  her  heart  seemed  to 
shrink,  in  which  her  heaving  sides  seemed  to  contract. 

Suddenly  the  man  placed  a  hand  on  each  of  her  shoul- 
ders with  a  gentleness  that  was  extraordinary. 

"  You  will  lead  her  to  him  ?  " 

*'  As  you  wish." 

A  strange  smile  twisted  the  ascetic  face. 

The  woman  breathed  heavily. 

"  A  man — a  living  man — I  hear  the  voice  of  a  living 
man ! " 

As  these  words  were  spoken  she  raised  one  of  his  hands 
in  both  her  own,  and  it  felt  the  fervour  of  her  lips.  A 
single  tear  out  of  her  eyes  fell  upon  it. 

In  the  next  moment  she  had  gone  back  to  the  other  room. 
Broke  still  kept  the  attitude  he  had  occupied  ever  since  he 
had  come  there.  To  the  grey  of  his  cheeks  had  suc- 
ceeded the  pallor  of  death.  The  nurse  sat  at  the  side 
of  the  fire  rocking  the  quiescent  child  in  her  arms.    The 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  THE  FITTEST        465 

wail  upstairs  had  ceased.  The  doctor  was  seen  descend- 
ing the  stairs.  His  rough  face  was  very  grave  and  com- 
posed.    He  came  softly  to  the  side  of  Mrs.  Broke. 

"  It  is  over,"  he  said  in  her  ear. 

She  held  her  heart. 

The  doctor  turned  to  the  infant  sleeping  in  the  arms  of 
the  nurse.  He  drew  the  blanket  gently  aside  and  looked 
at  it. 

"  A  fine  boy/'  he  said. 

His  comment  awoke  no  echo  of  response  in  the  un- 
happy woman  shivering  by  his  side.  His  eyes  went  across 
the  room  to  where  Broke  still  huddled  with  his  chin  rest- 
ing on  his  stick. 

"  Ha !  there  is  the  grandfather !     Does  he  know  ?  '* 

"  Tell  him,"  said  the  unhappy  woman. 

The  doctor  turned  towards  him. 

"  A  fine  boy,  Mr.  Broke,"  he  said,  with  a  native  hearti- 
ness in  his  voice. 

The  direct  manner  of  the  address  did  something  to  lift 
Broke  from  his  stupor.  For  the  first  time  he  took  his 
head  out  of  his  hands,  and  in  the  act  the  stick  fell  with 
a  clatter  to  the  floor. 

'*  A  fine  boy,"  the  doctor  repeated  in  his  bluff  voice. 

"Eh?"  said  Broke. 

His  tone  was  hoarse,  querulous,  bewildered.  There 
seemed  to  be  some  kind  of  significance  in  the  words  of  the 
doctor,  but  somehow  his  mind  could  not  seize  it. 

"  A  fine  boy,"  said  the  doctor  yet  again,  and  a  little 
proudly.  "  It  is  a  strange  providence  that  watches  over 
you  old  families,  don't  you  think  ?  " 

Not  a  glimmer  of  comprehension  appeared  in  the  eyes 
of  the  grandfather.  They  were  stretched  dully  upon  the 
lamp.     The  sweat  was  springing  from  his  pores. 

"  The  noise,"  he  muttered.  "  That  damned  noise. 
Why  has  it  stopped  ?  " 

"  We  couldn't  save  her." 

**  Hey ! "  said  Broke.  He  placed  a  hand  behind  his  ear 
and  bent  forward  in  the  feebly  querulous  manner  of  a 
very  aged  man  who  is  deaf. 


466  BROKE  OF  COVENDEN 

The  doctor  repeated  his  words. 

"  I  don't  understand,"  said  Broke  feebly.  "  I — I  want 
to  know  about  that  damned  noise." 

"  I  cannot  recall  a  more  painful  or  difficult  case  in  my 
experience.     We  had  no  chance  from  the  first." 

A  vague  comprehension  was  seen  to  creep  into  the  grey 
face  of  the  grandfather.  His  massive  frame  was  sud- 
denly shaken  and  convulsed.  His  wife  lifted  the  bundle 
out  of  the  arms  of  the  nurse  and  bore  it  to  him.  Mutely 
he  lifted  his  piteous  face  to  hers. 

"  Edmund,"  she  said,  calling  him  by  name. 

The  sound  of  the  familiar  calm  voice  was,  as  always,  a 
source  of  strength  and  consolation  to  him.  Something  of 
the  stupor  was  banished  from  his  spirit,  something  of  the 
palsy  was  taken  from  his  limbs.  He  extended  both  his 
arms  towards  his  wife  with  a  gesture  of  thirsting  eager- 
ness. She  tucked  the  sleeping  fragment  of  life  firmly 
within  them.     He  gathered  it  slowly  on  to  his  knees. 

She  then  withdrew  to  the  room  adjoining. 

"  Now ! "  she  breathed  from  the  threshold. 

Delia  and  her  husband  were  seated  at  the  table  side  by 
side,  but  at  the  summons  the  young  man  rose  at  once  to 
his  feet.  Delia  followed  his  action  with  dull,  sceptical, 
rather  terrified  eyes. 

"  Come,  dear  heart !  " 

He  raised  her  very  gently  by  the  arm.  Taking  her  then 
by  the  hand,  he  led  the  way  into  the  other  room.  She 
yielded  to  him  completely,  but  with  terror  and  incredulity 
ever  increasing  in  her  face.  Broke  was  discovered  in  a 
comer  with  a  shapeless  mass  of  blanket  on  his  knees. 
His  face  was  hardly  recognizable,  it  was  so  wet  and  grey. 
He  lifted  it  at  the  approach  of  his  daughter  and  her  hus- 
band; he  had  expected  to  see  his  wife.  A  look  of  be- 
wilderment, like  that  in  the  eyes  of  his  daughter,  came 
upon  him,  but  it  passed  almost  at  once.  It  was  succeeded 
by  an  expression  that  was  incomprehensible,  that  had  no 
meaning.  His  mouth  grew  loose  and  weak.  His  right 
arm  tightened  about  the  precious  burden  it  encompassed. 
Suddenly  his  left  arm  was  seen  to  be  extended;  and  at 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  THE  FITTEST        467 

the  same  instant  a  harrowing  agony  seemed  to  pass  over 
and  to  shatter  his  frame. 

At  once  the  man  led  Delia  to  where  the  hand  of  her 
father  awaited  her.  But  even  when  she  had  come  to  him 
the  power  was  not  in  her  to  yield  her  hand  to  his.  She 
stood  mute  as  a  stone.  Her  hand  was  placed  in  the  limp 
thing  that  was  offered  her.  The  curious  weakness  of  its 
pressure  helped  her  to  yield  a  little.  The  man  returned 
at  once  to  the  room  out  of  which  he  had  come  and  closed 
the  door,  leaving  Mrs.  Broke  to  stand  and  gaze  with  eyes 
that  were  going  blind. 

Upstairs  sat  the  old  woman  by  the  side  of  the  bed,  deso- 
late and  without  tears,  nursing  the  dead  hand  of  her  niece. 
Downstairs  sat  our  hero  clasping  his  man-child  with  one 
arm,  with  the  other  his  daughter. 

At  this  point  those  lovers  of  honest  laughter  sitting  in 
heaven  rubbed  their  knees  and  roared  lustily.  The  cur- 
tain was  rung  down ;  and  the  God  of  Irony,  the  author  of 
the  little  piece  that  had  been  performed  with  such  feel- 
ing and  taste  by  this  intelligent  body  of  players,  leant 
forward  in  his  box  to  bow  his  acknowledgments.  Again 
and  again  he  deferred  to  the  applause  that  was  showered 
upon  him  from  every  part  of  the  Olympian  theatre.  For 
all  concerned  the  evening  had  been  a  great  success. 


THE  END 


YB  39882 


